Jie SHAO: Time, Arrested: Curated by WANG Yaoli
“…a TRAVEL BAN is in effect BEGINNING AT 9PM due to dangerous blizzard conditions. All NON-ESSENTIAL VEHICLES are RESTRICTED from NYC roads until 12PM on 2/23…”¹
“Is this the fourth or fifth winter this year?” N joked.
“I think it’s the fifth.”
BONIAN SPACE is pleased to announce the opening of Time, Arrested, a solo project by artist Jie SHAO, curated by WANG Yaoli, on view from June 27 to July 25, 2026. Triggered by a phone storm alert earlier this year and a casual conversation between friends, the travel ban severed routine connections, producing a subtle shift in perception. Drawing from this enforced immobility, Time, Arrested captures the faint, residual tension clipped between motion and stasis.
Within the gallery’s window, SHAO constructs a micro system with a rocking horse, a ceiling fan lamp, clockwork frogs, and moths. Through metal casting, materials and objects are detached from their original textures and physicality, unified into cold, stark metal. Here, casting functions as the central sculptural process, as well as a mechanism to rule differences and movements.
In the state of starkness, time is arrested: clockwork frogs are paralyzed in their hops; the rocking horse is fixed at the apex of the motion arc; hanging above, a ceiling fan lamp hangs powerless, converted into a static decoy. The lunar moth and silk moth remain trapped in a terminal spiral—performing the only markers of nature.
Synthesizing domestic objects and frozen specimens, SHAO isolates a state of time collapsing inward. In this imposed stasis, these objects sink into a new, heavy gravity. The window outgrows its street-facing display, becoming a vessel resisting transience—a landscape where the storm has passed, yet everything remains suspended.
[1] Excerpt from the extreme weather emergency alert issued by New York City on February 22, 2026. Original text: Mayor Mamdani has issued a State of Emergency for New York City; a TRAVEL BAN is in effect BEGINNING AT 9PM due to dangerous blizzard conditions. All NON-ESSENTIAL VEHICLES are RESTRICTED from NYC roads until 12PM on 2/23. Vehicles are only permitted for essential & emergency travel. More info: https://on.nyc.gov/4qQLKZU or call 311.