Zhanchao Pan
In passing spaces
This series of four installations revolves around space, memory, concealment, and perception. The works do not attempt to construct a stable space; rather, using media and actions such as glass, cloth, mirrors, light, and touch, they reveal the space’s uncertainty, fluidity, and the way it is shaped by subjective experience.
My interest in “space” is not because it is a measurable physical unit, but because, after being used, perceived, and remembered it gradually acquires mood, structure, and weight. From different angles these pieces respond to the same proposition: can we truly see a space? Or can we only see the versions of ourselves we have left within it?
2025
Three-Panel Folding Installation
192x120x35cm
soap, glass cabinet doors, acrylic, plants, glasses, wood, handmade papers, Film printings, heliographic papers, iron sheets, sponges, hinges
Constructed as a triptych wooden-frame screen, each panel is divided by a central slat into an upper and a lower picture, producing twelve discrete visual units in total. Each unit is built on a single sheet of glass, with abstract layers collaged on its recto and verso—lens fragments, translucent photographs, cyanotypes, wood pieces, paint and other materials—creating visual encounters that interfere with one another yet never coincide. After the compositions are set, liquid soap is poured on both faces of the glass and allowed to oxidize slowly over time.
Sheltered by glass, soap and UV adhesive, the twelve images appear sealed within a temporal interface: close in proximity but never fully visible at once. Right and left, this and that, intimacy and distance—like the two faces of experience—coexist in the work while continually obscuring one another.
The twelve panels correspond to six apartments I have lived in as an adult. Each dwelling became an extension of the body and, under differing moods and durations, divided in memory into distinct images and textures. The two sides of the screen signify the psychological aspects of space—belonging and escape, light and pressure, intimacy and indifference—experiences that cannot be apprehended simultaneously yet inhabit the same structure.
Through the “occlusion of transparency,” the work reflects on the irreconcilable gap between experience and understanding: we can only stand on one side to look, while the other—though near—is folded away and hidden by physical, emotional and temporal forces.
2025
Wall-based glass panel installation
55 x 60 x 12 cm
Tempered glasses, glass, soap, acrylic sheet, UV resin, wood strip, tree branches, cotton, miniature bed
These fragments float, overlap, and sit in juxtaposition to form a non-linear spatial structure. It is at once the construction of an order and the revelation of disorder, pointing to how memories accumulate, blur, and recombine within space. Each glass functions as a cross-section of consciousness; together they compose an interior that cannot be fully reached.
As viewers move around the work, they traverse a disassembled room, searching the layered fragments for familiar traces. Space here ceases to be a static container and becomes a flux shaped by time and feeling.
2025
Interactive light installation
10 x 12 x 10 cm
Picture frame, wooden strip, miniature Chair, cotton fabric, warm LED light.
When Light Happens is an interactive installation about spatial perception and viewer participation. Encased in white cotton cloth, the interior structure remains unseen; only the silhouette of a miniature chair is faintly discernible through the fabric.
When a viewer approaches and lightly touches the chairback, a warm yellow beam at the base of the work is triggered on; touch again and the light goes out. The appearance of light becomes an event, revealing that a space’s brightness and darkness are not fixed but activated through action and perception.
The cotton wrapping renders the space soft and indeterminate, suggesting concealment, protection, and the sediment of time. Light functions as a responsive medium, allowing viewers’ gestures to leave traces within the work and reawaken emotions and memories sealed in the space.
By converting a small object into a spatial trigger, the piece emphasizes that space is not merely displayed but participated in, summoned, and constructed.
When a viewer approaches and lightly touches the chairback, a warm yellow beam at the base of the work is triggered on; touch again and the light goes out. The appearance of light becomes an event, revealing that a space’s brightness and darkness are not fixed but activated through action and perception.
The cotton wrapping renders the space soft and indeterminate, suggesting concealment, protection, and the sediment of time. Light functions as a responsive medium, allowing viewers’ gestures to leave traces within the work and reawaken emotions and memories sealed in the space.
By converting a small object into a spatial trigger, the piece emphasizes that space is not merely displayed but participated in, summoned, and constructed.
2025
Wall-based Glass Installation
60 x 38 x 2cm
UV Resin, soap, pigments, glass cabinet doors, hinges, plants, glasses, mirror, handmade papers
Though the doors cannot be opened, they invite the viewer to imagine the space within: standing before this “window,” we do not merely look outward but at the traces a place leaves as time flows. The subtle differences between the two faces suggest how the same space shifts through different experiences. Reflections, transparency and occlusion on the glass turn seeing itself into a passage through time and memory. The work presents an inaccessible slice of space and a metaphor for modes of looking—we always view through some medium, angle or experience, and so space becomes unstable, layered and ambiguous.