Inspired by Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, the exhibition explores portraiture as a way of thinking about identity, desire, and perception. Drawing on painting, literature, and artificial intelligence, Chen asks what it means to construct an image of a person, or a place, from fragments, projections, and acts of imagination.
Mandy Zhang Art is pleased to present Behind Every Exquisite Thing, a solo exhibition by Chinese artist Xiaoguo Chen, curated by Lianyi Wang.
Inspired by Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, the exhibition explores portraiture as a way of thinking about identity, desire, and perception. Drawing on painting, literature, and artificial intelligence, Chen asks what it means to construct an image of a person, or a place, from fragments, projections, and acts of imagination.
The project began with a residency that never happened. During a short visit to London, Chen became fascinated by Seymour Place, the neighbourhood surrounding Mandy Zhang Art. Unable to spend an extended period living there, he and curator Lianyi Wang developed the idea of a “virtual residency”. Using AI, literary references, local stories, and conversations with residents, they built an imagined familiarity with a place the artist barely knew.
Fragments of Wilde’s novel reappear throughout the exhibition in unexpected ways. Mirrors, chandeliers, bookshelves, mobile phones, and shop-window reflections drift through contemporary London interiors and streetscapes. The novel is not illustrated directly. Instead, its atmosphere and underlying questions are relocated into the everyday life of Seymour Place.
People connected to the neighbourhood appear throughout the paintings. Some are recognisable, while others remain partially hidden or pass briefly through the scene. Portraiture is no longer centred on a single sitter. Here, it becomes a way of describing how people, places, and images shape one another.
Although AI plays a role in the project, it remains a tool rather than a subject. AI is used throughout the project as a method for generating situations, associations, and possible narratives. The paintings do not reproduce these outputs directly. They transform them into something slower and more personal, shaped by observation, emotion, and the physical process of painting itself.
The exhibition takes its title from a line in Wilde’s novel: “Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.” In Wilde’s world, beauty is inseparable from moral consequence. Chen shifts this idea into the present. The tensions that run through these paintings are quieter and more familiar: the awkwardness of language, the fatigue of social interaction, the glow of a phone screen, or the loneliness that can exist beneath the surface of an elegant neighbourhood.
At its heart, Behind Every Exquisite Thing asks what painting can offer at a moment when images are increasingly produced, filtered, and circulated by machines. Chen’s answer lies in the act of painting itself. Technology can generate images and stories, but it cannot complete the act of seeing. Through paint, speculation becomes experience, and borrowed narratives are transformed into something intimate, uncertain, and deeply human.
Exhibition Details
Xiaoguo Chen: Behind Every Exquisite Thing
2 July – 1 August 2026
16 Seymour Place, London, W1H 7NG Curated by Lianyi Wang
Opening reception: Thursday, 2 July 2026, 4-8PM
For press, please contact Lianyi Wang, lotus.lywang@gmail.com
For sales and general enquiries, please contact Chloi Kountouridou, chloi@mandyzhang.art