In a hushed darkness, amid echoing sounds of breath, two giant vases hang suspended with their mouths facing each other—serene, otherworldly, contemplative. The slow, rhythmic tide of inhalation and exhalation fills the space, as if an enormous being lies in deep slumber, drawing viewers into a shared dreamlike reverie. 

Muted gold and blue light, softly complementary in hue, spills from two square projections on the side wall and overlap across the fiberglass surfaces of the vases. Their convergence casts a metallic gleam and translucent shimmer over the vessels’ silhouettes. Bathed in this hazy glow, the pair of ethereal vases holds absolute sway over the viewer. Their mouths appear seamless, leading into deep hollows that seem capable of absorbing entire bodies or every trace of thought. Peering into these abyssal openings, one senses a pair of eyes returning the gaze, reflecting and comprehending in wordless exchange.

Traditionally used to hold flowers, this vessel form is known as a Guanyin vase, named after the feminine bodhisattva in Chinese Buddhism, who is often depicted holding such a bottle. Chen Zhou first adopted its shape unconsciously, only later learning its name from a friend. For the artist, the vases are at once bottles and tombs of beauty, surrogates for eternity. In his paintings, these figure-like floral vessels—solitary or paired—recur frequently, shifting between volume and flatness, stillness and collapse, at times toppling or splintering into ghostly afterimages. Here, the vases step out from his pictorial plane and expand into monumental sculptural form, evolving into a sensory theater of perception—a new experiment that extends Chen’s long-standing pursuit of the metaphysical and the sensory.

On the shoulder of one vase, the form of a human ear swells from its smooth surface—half-camouflaged, grotesquely bizarre, yet entirely at home. As the viewer registers this, the vases seem roused from their sacred silence and begin listening to their own existence. In the shadows, one’s breath slowly falls into rhythm with the surrounding waves of deep respiration, drawn in and swallowed by their flow. Immersed in this resonant reverberation, attuned to the quiet rise and fall of breath, time feels suspended in a liminal present. 

The Breathing Mirrors (2025) is an anchor piece in “Chen Zhou: The Dreaming Mirror,” an exhibition arising from the artist’s residency in Yunshantun, China, supported by the Chance Art Foundation. The show is on view at the Shanghai Museum of Glass until December 31.

Joan Yiquan Chen is an editorial intern at ArtAsiaPacific.