This is the season when the place opens completely: days stretch, borders soften, and the sea becomes a passage rather than a threshold. The land is no longer held apart by water; it is touched, entered, consumed. What was once peripheral becomes central, exposed, almost weightless under the pressure of attention.

The works gathered here are shaped by walking, waiting, and listening. His paintings are created through an intuitive and physical process. Each painting emerges from movement rather than premeditation, creating compositions that feel both deliberate and fleeting. They register fragments of perception of the island, moments situated between observation and memory.

Shen draws from a transnational sensibility that resists clear boundaries. His works navigates between abstraction and suggestion, structure and spontaneity. Like looking at the clouds, the artist creates open pictorial fields that invite viewers to linger, wander, and project their own associations.

When an Island is No Longer an Island is not about loss alone, but about permeability – about what happens when a place becomes continuously available, and how intimacy persists even as boundaries dissolve.


Shen Han was born in Hangzhou in 1988 and lives and works in Berlin. He received his Master of Fine Arts from the Berlin University of the Arts in 2017 and participated in an exchange program at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in the United States. In 2026, Shen will have an upcoming solo exhibition at Yuan Art Museum in Beijing.

His recent solo exhibitions include Tanya Leighton Gallery, Berlin (2024); 12 Rooms at Kewenig, Berlin; PARIS-B, Paris (2023); Vacancy, Shanghai (2019); Galerie Paris-Beijing, Paris (2019); and Edmond Gallery, Berlin (2018). His work has also been presented in group exhibitions at Spoiler, Berlin; PM/AM, London; Hua International, Berlin; He Xiangning Art Museum, Shenzhen; Aurora Museum, Shanghai; Tansbao Gallery, Taipei; Qiao Space, Shanghai; König Galerie, Berlin; Galerie Anette Müller, Düsseldorf; Tang Contemporary Art, Bangkok; and Wuhan Art Museum, Hubei, among others.

Shen Han’s work is included in the permanent collections of Aurora Museum, Shanghai, and Wuhan Art Museum, Hubei.