Blurring the line between movement and paint

The selections at the Pocantico Center focus on Shen's recent works, which portray the spiritual and the mind in an abstract landscape, and share elements of traditional Chinese shanshui landscape painting.

"We are delighted to have this opportunity to collaborate with the Pocantico Center of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund," says Michelle Yun Mapplethorpe, director and chief curator of the Katonah Museum of Art.

This exhibition and partnership have been many years in the making, and it feels like a natural fit, she says.

Beyond their shared interest in Shen's visual art, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Pocantico Center are also hosting Shen for a special dance residency, during which he is creating a newly commissioned work for the American Dance Festival.

"We thought it would be the perfect opportunity to have a dual-venue exhibition that really showcases the breadth of Shen Wei's artistic practice, both between visual and performing art," says Mapplethorpe.

On display at the exhibition at the Pocantico Center of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, a nonprofit organization housed on the Rockefeller Estate, Shen's new Suspension in Blue series (2017-2020), painted in acrylic, was inspired by a movement from his dance technique "natural body development".

The newest watercolor series, MindScape, from 2023, unfolds across the bright, high-ceilinged gallery. The Reflected Elements series of eight paintings was created while Shen spent much of his time in Paris during the COVID pandemic, where he developed a new technique with abstract natural forms in a golden glowing brown, inspired by landscape paintings from the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127).