Gene Gallery is delighted to announce the solo exhibition “Eyes Unfold Distances”, by artist Wu Yumo, on view from August 30 to October 20, 2025.

The exhibition features 18 new works drawn from two series, “Photography Writing” and “The Rupture of Vision”, extending the artist’s sustained inquiry into the medium: photography is no longer treated as a tool of clear representation, but as a pure reflection of the inner realm.

This exhibition originates from Wu Yumo’s experience of stargazing: as the eyes trace the beam of a star pointer, distance is illuminated, and with unwavering focus, stars emerge, layer by layer, from the darkness, where nearby dust and distant stardust drift and mingle.

The gaze wanders across distances, while the camera acts within reflections of the world. The images in this exhibition fall into two narrative threads: novel traces, unfamiliar eyes. Photography writes and leaves traces — the camera is the pen, light the ink; the body’s trembling, pulsing and swaying are the gestures of hand, while glints are the impulse of thought and the instant of decision. Scattered fragments of the world are thus transcribed into a reality bordering on the cosmic.

To see with the eye is the first step where the world is touched and dreams take shape. In everyday seeing, the body unconsciously adjusts distance and posture, as the eye muscles tighten and release, maintaining focus to keep vision clear. Yet in Wu Yumo’s practice, the camera reaches the ultimate limit of distance against what is seen; focus collapses under the strain of closeness — what is seen no longer resolves into objects, detached from the rational form, returning to the raw shape of oculus. She reshapes the eye from reflections of the world, and within that eye, the world is reflected.

As depiction falls away, the inner consciousness of the image reveals itself. Through extreme apertures, long exposures, unstable stances, and the very faltering of vision, the photograph’s depth is compressed onto the plane of a sheet of paper. Seeing returns to an unsettled state, opening toward another kind of meaning — photography need not conform to clear forms, and yet still fall into the heart.

Perception hovers between the real and the illusory, wanders among infinite poles, and even wounds eyes. Distance shifts repeatedly, dust drifts like snow, the flight of insects traces pen-like marks, architecture dissolves into curtains of rain, flowing water shimmers as starlight, the sun burns into fragments, and mirrors melt into new landscapes. At the end of the exhibition space, when you encounter the final image — of a translucent shape emerging within a burning negative — an eye, a metonym of photography, comes alive.

In “Eyes Unfold Distances”, the eye is no longer fully present, and distance is no longer precisely known. Clarity turns out to be the greatest misreading; truth, if anywhere, dwells only in the instant of fleeting bewilderment.

TEXT / WU YUMO