Galerie Urs Meile is pleased to present Pale World, the first solo exhibition in Europe by Chinese artist Chen Sixin (*1995). The exhibition brings together a series of new works in which the artist examines the figure of the ghost as a symbol shaped by globalization and filtered through personal memory, internet culture, and popular imagery.

Excerpt from the essay “Chen Sixin: The Tail of the Story” by Ren Yue.

Soft Steps of the Ghost

In a series of new works from 2025, Chen Sixin has continued to use the slow, intricate medium of colored pencil drawings, but has shifted to a “ghost” motif. Unlike the richly textured, muscular and sinewy animal images of his earlier works, the ghosts in his new series seem to float in the air with blurred edges, lightly sweeping across the picture. This lightness has softened the sense of direct, overbearing force in much of Chen Sixin’s earlier imagery, leaving more room for the imagination, for breathing, and for fluidity. Furthermore, if the animal images in Chen Sixin’s works have a clear ecological thread, the ghost works have shifted more into the realm of memory and imagination.

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