Nianxin Li, The back of the shell, 2025, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 48 inches

Nianxin Li
MacGuffin

March 19 through April 26, 2025
Opens Wednesday, March 19, 6–8pm

Harper’s Apartment
51 East 74th Street, 2X, New York, NY 10021
By appointment

Harper’s is pleased to announce MacGuffin, New York-based artist Nianxin Li’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. The presentation features new paintings by Li and opens Wednesday, March 19, 6–8pm, with a reception attended by the artist. 

Across MacGuffin, Li captures the ever-evolving nature of intimacy through a confluence of amorphous bodies and haptic forms. Li explores the intricacies of coexistence amid interspecial beings rendered in cinematic chiaroscuro. Within these dynamic scenes, connection, alienation, dependence, and detachment orbit in and out of sight, illuminating processes of relationality that remain in constant flux. By dissolving the distinction between flora and fauna in her biomorphic figuration, the artist proposes a post-anthropocenic vision of entanglement. Li’s luminous yet inscrutable figures embody the precarity of presence, revealing the fragile connections that shape all forms of life within shared terrains.

Works like Tell me pulse with organic fluidity. Here, a form twists and blooms like a sentient flora, bursting forth from a searing red background. The subject resembles a carnivorous pitcher plant or otherworldly sentinel with rippling skin saturated in emerald, indigo, and crimson. But beneath a pitcher’s paper-thin folds, a demure bust peeks out, suggesting a parasitic relationship or biological mutation. The interplay of light and shadow makes this undulating form feel both weightless and substantial, as if suspended in a hypnagogic twirl. Like in many of the works that comprise MacGuffin, a seductive yet menacing tension simmers here as if an unfolding mystery, resounding throughout. 

A similar ominous friction is evident in The back of the shell. Here, the painting’s subject dramatically unfurls like a primordial being in metamorphosis, its iridescent carapace enclosing a pulsating core that resembles a heart or embryo. From its gleaming exterior, a sweeping gradient of teal and emerald refracts, colliding with a brilliant, multi-hued backdrop. Meanwhile, the shell’s gentle folds spiral into themselves, suggesting an enigma neither fully revealed nor obscured.

Repeatedly throughout MacGuffin, Li stages a porous threshold between emergence and concealment: the artist’s esoteric forms exist in a perpetual state of becoming, wherein cycles of life and coexistence weave in and out of the image plane. These entities blur the distinction between bodies, materials, and environments, suggesting a world where intimacy and attachment are infinitely negotiable. Through slippery bodies shifting and distorting, Li highlights the instability of coexistence, where dependency is not a fact but instead a query to be determined. 

Nianxin Li (b. 1999, Chongqin, China) received a BFA from Academy of Fine Arts, Florence in 2021, and an MFA from School of Visual Arts in 2023. Her work has been presented in solo and two-person exhibitions at LATITUDE Gallery, New York (2024); and K11 Museum, Shanghai (2023). Most recently, Li’s work was included in group presentations at Tang Contemporary, Hong Kong (2024); MONTI8, Latina, IT (2024); Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York (2024); Berry Campbell, New York (2024); la BEAST gallery, Los Angeles (2024); and KennaXu Gallery, Shenzhen, CN (2023). Li lives and works in New York City.

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Detail: Nianxin Li, The back of the shell, 2025

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