Hu Xiaoyuan’s Carpel III (2025) is austere in form, unassuming in stature, yet quietly lethal. A rosewood branch juts out from a block of chiseled marble, morphing halfway into a thin mesh tube meticulously crafted from xiao, or raw silk—the artist’s signature material. As the stiffly ascending branch flows into the suppler, more pliable descent of the semi-transparent tube, its concise curvature summons a whip settling after a strike. At its apex, where wood meets xiao, perches another xiao structure—the hollow, ghostly echo of the marble block below. Exquisite, ethereal, fragile as a breath, its wraithlike form commands a stately, even ominous presence, embodying the delicate violence of a soap bubble still attached to a wand—poised either to lift off, or burst.