Linnéa Gad '22 Exhibits 'Breath is Everywhere' at Liu Shiming Art Foundation

Visual Art alum Linnéa Gad '22 presents her latest exhibit, Breath is Everywhere, alongside the work of the renowned Chinese sculptor Liu Shiming (1926-2010) at the gallery created in his honor, the Liu Shiming Art Foundation. The exhibition puts into dialogue forms shaped across generations and is on view from November 12, 2025, to January 30, 2026, at the midtown gallery.

Gad contributed to Breath is Everywhere sculptures made of materials as diverse as lime mortar, oyster shells, goat hair, and steel, lapis lazuli, bronze, and porcelain. Her singular landscape, Eon Scape III (40 ½ x 55 ½ in, 2023) transmutes the winking diamonds of light atop waves out of pink oils and toner on a wood panel.

The two artists share a philosophy that all matter contains a life force. Gad opens her own description of her work with a quote from Shiming, "I want my life to be present in all my works, so that after my death, my friends could still dialogue in silence simply by casting their eyes on my art." 

Gad's collection—while made of dramatically different materials and means than Shiming's clayformed and bronze-cast sculptures of rural Chinese life—shares an intuitive, electric vitality with his work through her selection of organic materials and shapes. "My sculptures and images are often nearly abstract but carry suggestive traits that invite interpretation," she said of her own work. 

The two collections meet in the liminal space of abstraction, as shown in a lead pairing of the exhibition, Shiming's Avalokiteśvara Inside the Ear 耳内观音 (4 ½ x 4 ½ x 9 ¼ in., bronze, 2005) and Gad's Suntrap II (16 ¼ x 4 ½ x 5 ½ in., welded steel and amber glass, 2025). The crest of the ear, which contains Avalokiteśvara like a grotto, is echoed in the curve of Suntrap II's blown amber glass, a globe that looks outward like an observatory or the face of an astronaut helmet.

"Linnéa Gadʼs sculptures extend Liu Shimingʼs logic without replicating his style, highlighting principles of structure, gesture, and narrative, and reinterpreting the presence of the living," said Maëlle Ebelle, the curator of the exhibit and director of the gallery. "Breath is Everywhere reveals sculptureʼs ability to create a network of correspondences, where the works resonate beyond their mere presence."

Linnéa Gad (b. 1990, Stockholm, Sweden) works in sculpture, painting, performance, and writing. Her practice reflects interconnected ecosystems, using materials such as cardboard, metal, bark, and porcelain, evoking processes of calcification and protection. She recycles materials and motifs, translating cycles of life and multiple temporalities. Her recent solo exhibitions include Return of The Mollusk at Astor Weeks, New York (2024), and Erratics at Spencer Brownstone, New York (2019). She has also exhibited in numerous international museums and galleries.