Mi Chen & Yan Wang: Temporary Storage

Chinese American Arts Council/Gallery 456 and ETA Gallery are pleased to present two-person exhibition “Temporary Storage.” Curated by Ariel He and Cicy Hu, the exhibition is on view from September 4, 2026, through September 18, 2026.

Exhibition Statement

“Temporary Storage” brings together new work by Mi Chen and Yan Wang, two artists who create objects that ask to be looked at before they are read. Both work through ceramic and language, keeping meaning in suspension. Where Wang stores memory and the missing body, Chen stores language itself, held and slowed before it settles into sense. A shared refusal to resolve, reached from two directions.

Chen’s practice runs through typography and the systems that carry it. Punctuation loosens from language and becomes shape, rhythm, furniture, a wall you look at instead of through. She slows the eye on purpose, keeping the text half-visible, letting form arrive before meaning. Working iteratively across two- and three-dimensional surfaces, she creates conditions where familiar patterns begin to shift, break, or loop, as a sustained process of locating herself in relation to what she makes.

Wang works with what the body leaves behind. Porcelain pillows rest in a dim circle, a recording hums low, and history becomes not the names that survived but the bodies that dreamed and vanished. Her objects hold the thickness of time, the debris of a hometown, the ghost of a head on a pillow. Across ink, paper, and clay, she works toward release rather than statement, an invitation to dream together rather than inherit her account.

The two arrive at the same refusal from opposite sides. What holds them together is what an object can sustain without resolving: forms that hold presence and loss at once, that store what cannot be surrendered, that stay unresolved as long as we look. The space, and what it carries, is temporary.

About the Artists

Mi Chen is a graphic designer and visual artist based in Brooklyn, NY, and New Haven, CT. She is currently pursuing an MFA at Yale School of Art. Her practice centers around the idea of reframing the familiar: taking everyday objects, forms of language, and visual systems, and repositioning them to reveal new relationships and meanings. She is particularly interested in how forms act as structures that shape perception, memory, and interpretation. Through iterative processes, patterns begin to shift, break, or loop, creating spaces where meaning becomes unstable. As a graphic designer, she engages text and glyphs as both carriers of meaning and formal elements. Across her projects, she moves between two-dimensional and three-dimensional surfaces, often questioning where a surface begins or ends, and how meaning shifts as language transitions from page to space.development of cutting-edge fields—such as art, technology, and AI—across multiple dimensions.

Yan Wang is a Beijing-born visual artist based in Brooklyn, NY, and Chicago, IL. Rooted in a background of printmaking and book art, Yan blends the tactile qualities of print with diverse mediums such as animation and ceramics. She holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Yan’s experience encompasses a wide range of printmaking techniques, mainly monograph and lithography. She is also skilled in craft disciplines like ceramics and bookbinding. Currently, she works as a ceramics instructor, while expanding her interdisciplinary exploration through clay sculptures, engaging with abstracted forms, and themes of social-political feminism as well as her cultural and immigrant identity.

About the Curators

Ariel He is a curator, artist, and researcher based in New York. She holds an MA in Visual Arts Administration from New York University and a BFA in Sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design. Ritual runs through her curatorial and research work: the structured, repeated acts through which people gather to make and share meaning. She attends to the objects and spaces that hold what a body leaves behind, and to how such traces resist a single, settled reading.

Cicy Hu is an art world professional and entrepreneur based in New York, with roots in Shanghai. She holds a BA in Art History from Bard College and an MA in Visual Arts Administration from NYU. She currently works at the New York office of Galerie Georges-Philippe & Nathalie Vallois, a Parisian gallery specializing in Nouveau Réalisme and contemporary art.

About ETA Gallery

ETA is a contemporary art pop-up platform that brings exhibitions to a variety of venues across New York City. ETA values and embraces accessibility in art. Each show is installed in a new location; whether it is a café, park, exhibition space, etc.; we as a gallery see potential for fine arts everywhere. ETA presents solo shows, group exhibitions, artist talks, and live performances. By collaborating with independent and public venues, ETA also strengthens the local small-business ecosystem, creating a symbiotic relationship between art and urban culture. ETA curates a wide range of disciplines and aesthetics, prioritizing emerging artists in various forms of contemporary art.

Opening Reception: September 4, 2026, 6-8pm
Please contact info@caacarts.orgfor more information.

Gallery 456
Hours: M-F, 1-5PM and by appointment
Address: 456 Broadway, 3rd Floor, New York, NY 10013, Elevator Accessible Contact: (212) 431-9740 | info@caacarts.org
Website: www.caacarts.org | Instagram/Facebook/Twitter: @caacarts
Chinese American Arts Council’s Gallery 456 Visual Arts Exhibition Series is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Gove¬¬¬rnor and the New York State Legislature.