Mandy Zhang Art presents Pareidolia, a group show of the artists Margarita Galandina, Cheuk Yiu Lo, and Mengmeng Zhang. Running between 12 March and 17 April 2025, the exhibition will showcase a series of paintings, drawings, sculptures, and photographs that respond to the artists’ personal experiences of migration and memory. Throughout, Pareidolia displays different approaches to figuration rooted in the artists’ investigations into their place of origin, shedding light on the interplay between cultural heritage and self-portraits.
The exhibition takes its title from pareidolia—the psychological tendency to perceive familiar images, such as faces or recognizable forms, within random or ambiguous visual patterns. This phenomenon plays a central role in the works on display, particularly in Lo’s sculptures, which are shaped by the natural characteristics of her materials. Throughout the exhibition, fleeting images seem to materialize and dissolve within the very substances that compose them, engaging visitors in an experience that mirrors the cognitive mechanisms of pareidolia. Beneath these fleeting forms lies a deeper engagement with biography and anthropology, as each artist turns to their cultural origins to investigate the ways identity is constructed, inherited, and transformed.
Pareidolia itself arises from the brain’s need to impose order on the world through associative processes—processes that are, in turn, shaped by personal experience. The artists in Pareidolia mirror this cognitive impulse, drawing upon the visual language and lived experiences of their homelands to construct representations of self. Yet rather than reinforcing cultural determinism, their works reflect on the delicate balance between honoring the past and embracing transformation.
