Chin Tsao

• Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz, Linz (AT)
• 06.02.–10.05.2026

As a result of the Enlightenment, science expanded the traditional Western concept of space and time to the point of infinity. The universe became older, larger and colder. This is also linked to the experience of uncertainty, no longer being at the centre of the universe, no longer being anchored in a world view that can wrestle history's ultimate meaning from it. The threat of an apocalypse was replaced by a geological continuity of catastrophes and changes.

There is a dawning awareness of an eerie, sublime indifference towards the human scale in a universe that is neither empty nor animated, but undead.

The exhibition brings together artistic positions that refer to concepts such as ‘deep time’ — periods of time spanning billions of years in which human existence is little more than a moment — and ‘cosmic horror,’ a feeling between fascination and horror in the face of non-human existence that is incomprehensible to our concepts of time and space.

Chin Tsao's ceramic objects move between aesthetic conceptions of Western and Eastern traditions and, at the same time, represent the ultra-contemporary pressure of constant sensory overload in their ornate forms and colours. Using one of humanity's most fragile, traditional and everyday materials – ceramics – Jack, Ophalian and Yunik ask whether we as a species are not subjecting ourselves to self-sabotage and even alienation in our current way of life.
The three sculptures can be viewed as works in their own right or as part of the installation EUTOPA (an amalgam of ‘Utopia’ and ‘Europa’, the latter being both one of Jupiter's Galilean moons and the mythological namesake of the continent of Europe), which was shown in 2022 at the Echo Correspondence project space in Vienna. EUTOPA was exhibited outdoors, with the ceramic forms protruding erect from the grass in a grouping, appearing like unknown exotic plants or sci-fi protagonists that had been removed from their actual habitat and arbitrarily transplanted. In their presence, the three sculptures evoke a world in which nature becomes an intangible entity that mutates beyond human logic.
Hinting at physicality, but at the same time destabilising it, Tsao's sculptures visualise an unrecognisable, almost eerie existence that eludes human interpretation.

Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz