Dissolving Dream
Chen Jin Solo Exhibition
At the Edge of Consciousness
Words by Liuxuan Lyu
Unfolding quietly within a white space tucked into the city, Dissolving Dream at 4C Gallery is not an exhibition about recreating dreams. Rather, it is an exploration of how dreams dissolve, take form, and disperse at the threshold of consciousness. Co-presented by artist Chen Jin and curator Liuxuan Lyu, the exhibition brings together recent paintings and fiber installations that revolve around the shifting states between dreaming and awareness.
Dreams are never fully retained. They leave behind only faint yet persistent traces—glimmers that slip through the cracks of consciousness. What this exhibition attempts to capture is precisely the shape of those traces: images that continue to move quietly in the final second before waking, yet can never be fully recalled or articulated.
Images of the Dream
Chen Jin’s work maintains a deliberate sense of distance. Rather than depicting specific dream scenes, she focuses on the subtlest vibrations between dream and consciousness. Colors fade at the edges, light exhales as if being withdrawn, and forms exist only as residues of something about to disappear. In her paintings, dreams are not narratives but conditions—states that are continuously unfolding and dissolving.
Upon entering the gallery, viewers are first met by a large textile work that functions like an entry point into a dream: a rhythm of inward descent, a surface gently pulled open into ripples.
Across the space, the paintings assemble light, vortices, and fragmented layers of color into structures that hover between figuration and abstraction. They appear to register the transformation of dreams across different stages of waking. Light is broken apart, folded back, and reassembled, visually tracing the way dreams are reshaped within layers of consciousness.
During the preparation of the exhibition, the works of The Sound I See were once subject to hesitation. Their simplicity seemed unlikely to meet the conventional expectations of public exhibition. Yet this very hesitation is aligned with Feng’s consistent creative stance—approaching art with restraint and introspection, privileging the pure presentation of emotion and lived experience rather than ornate embellishment. The works thus not only record fragments of daily life but also embody the tension between personal aesthetic integrity and the expectations of a broader public.
Echoes of the Dream
A group of six works on the left side of the gallery forms a crucial constellation. Identical in scale and composition, these prints repeat the same image structure across different tonal variations—like a single dream recalled and forgotten multiple times, each iteration carrying a different temperature and intensity of light.
Nearby, two large-scale works create a striking contrast. One collapses inward toward a luminous core, while the other expands outward as a surge of energy. Together, they suggest a concealed cycle of consciousness, slowing the viewer’s pace and drawing them into a state of perception that is still, yet continuously in motion.
Creatures of the Dream
The fiber jellyfish installations—both the softest and sharpest elements of the exhibition—seem to breathe quietly within the space. They resemble creatures encountered in dreams, or fragments of consciousness not yet fully formed. Patiently extended, bound, and generated by hand, they remind us that dreams are not always grand or dramatic; more often, they exist as a few gently drifting strands.
On the Threshold — A Curatorial Note
I am drawn to the term Dissolving Dream.
It allows dreams to remain free, rather than captured;
images to stay fluid, rather than fixed.
Dissolving Dream does not ask viewers to interpret or decode. Instead, it offers an experience of consciousness itself. We hope visitors will linger at a particular threshold—
neither fully inside a dream nor entirely awake;
neither memory nor forgetting.
It is a blurred, suspended line that nonetheless continues to vibrate.
This is where art takes place.
If, while moving through the exhibition, you sense a lingering presence—
as if a dream has not yet fully dissipated—
that resonance may be precisely what Dissolving Dream intends to leave behind.
About Artists
Feiyu Feng is a visual artist working at the intersection of photography and cinematography, crafting imagery that feels both intimate and cinematic. With a background that bridges both mediums, she distills personal experience into minimalist visual narratives, capturing the emotional resonance of fleeting moments with quiet intensity. Her work is an exploration of womanhood—its contradictions, its quiet power, its vulnerability. The women she portrays are complex and multifaceted, embodying a spectrum of emotional truth: fierce yet fragile, grounded yet ethereal.
Feng’s restrained compositions emphasize subtlety over spectacle, inviting the viewer to lean in and linger. Her storytelling leaves space for ambiguity, where what is unspoken becomes as meaningful as what is seen. Influenced by the quiet dramas of daily life, she uses softness and stillness as tools of revelation. In her hands, the camera becomes less a recorder and more a listener—bearing witness to the unsaid, the unseen, the beautifully unresolved.