THROUGH THE GLOW
Stepping into Neon Haze, NIANXIN LI’s first solo exhibition at New York’s Uffner & Liu gallery, feels like entering a world where light has learned to breathe. Her canvases pulse with disco-born colours – synthetic purples, acidic greens, radiant flashes that flicker like the memory of a dance floor. Yet beneath the glow, something more elusive emerges: translucent membranes, shell-like forms, shadows that spiral inward toward soft voids. Li is not simply painting atmospheres but staging encounters between intimacy and estrangement, transparency and concealment. In her words, privacy in contemporary life has become a “state of hyper-visibility” – seen, but never truly known. This paradox animates her practice, where every luminous gesture conceals as much as it reveals. Shadowplay spoke with the New York–based artist about rhythm, meditation, fragility, and the seduction of colour.
