October 30 – December 6, 2025
VillageOneArt presented Yu Cheng’s Waking Life, on view at the gallery from October 30, 2025.
In Yu Cheng: Waking Life, guests to the gallery are transported to visions of intimate interior spaces and landscapes in equal measure, with each painting seemingly dangling some captivating secret just out of reach of the viewer.
In Girl in Red, a young girl wearing a red outfit appears toward the center of the picture plane, her back turned to us, working on a laptop flanked by drawings in what appears to be a classroom. What the girl is doing, or exactly where she is, remains a mystery—a “translation of [a] dream,” potentially, where reality is represented but difficult to grasp in its perplexity.
This excerpt of a quote by René Magritte speaks to Cheng’s explorations of “the interplay between everyday life and imagined scenes,” where something just beyond reality lies in wait in each painting presented to the viewer. The interplay of light and shadow in each scene contributes to the otherworldly feeling in these paintings, expressing the artist’s wish to evoke a “dreamlike space that mirrors or extends reality.”
Similar work by the artist embraces the nuanced light and shadow present in interior spaces, such as Art Studio and Standing, revealing her ability to play with the expectations of reality separated from context through careful composition and brushwork. Landscapes such as Parking Lot and Grove St. subvert the viewer’s expectation of realistic scenes of nature by squeezing man-made structures between, alongside, or just beyond trees, branches, and leaves. The artist’s wondrous painting Huntington Ave seems to evoke Chaim Soutine and Francis Bacon in its discomfiting presentation of a figure hovering at the precipice of a large, tunneled structure that seems too large to exist in reality.
The artist’s ability to evoke storytelling while embracing an air of mystery subverts expectations, offering a delightful window into a world hovering seemingly beyond both dreams and reality. Yu Cheng: Waking Life speaks to our present moment—imbued with deep fakes, A.I., and composite imagery—evoking the eternal, persistent realm of dreams.
Works in the Exhibition
Waking Life was on view at VillageOneArt, 150 West 25th Street, Suite 403, New York, from October 30 through December 6, 2025. For inquiries regarding available works by Yu Cheng, please contact info@villageoneart.com.