Information Curatorial Essay Artists Artworks

Where the Mind Roams Among Things

— Elegance of the Study: Hanging Art

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A shuzhai, or scholar’s studio, is a space shaped by layers of cultural imagination. Its enduring charm has never lain merely in the keeping of books, or in making reading easier.

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With Where the Mind Roams Among Things — Elegance of the Study: Hanging Art, Yi Yun Art takes hanging art as an entry point into the culture of the shuzhai, presenting a group of exceptional small-scale works. We have deliberately returned our attention to a more intimate scale, seeking works suited to the study, to daily life, and to long companionship. Unlike works encountered at a museum-like distance, these do not rely on monumentality. Yet among them may be a finely wrought work by a master, or a deeply engaging small piece of quiet charm.

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To shape one’s own study is to make space for one’s particular taste, temperament, and pleasures. Hanging paintings and calligraphy, plants, flowers, stones, traditional tea wares, incense implements, and the accoutrements of the scholar’s desk—from the placement of each object to the way.

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YI YUN ART・Qingtian・1F, No. 23, Ln. 12, Qingtian St., Da’an Dist., Taipei

4/16/2026

5/9/2026

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策展論述

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A shuzhai, or scholar’s studio, is a space shaped by layers of cultural imagination. Its enduring charm has never lain merely in the keeping of books, or in making reading easier.

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Even today, what we call a shuzhai need not take the form of a traditional scholar’s room. For people today, a study may be nothing more than a small room with a desk, a lamp, and a few bookcases gathered around it—yet it still becomes a place where one may settle the mind and come to rest. For this very reason, the everyday life that unfolds within the study takes on a special significance.

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It is there that one works, reads, writes, delights in the objects one lives with, and tends to small plants; it is there, too, that one’s sense of wonder toward life quietly gathers. When one pauses from concentrated thought and lifts one’s eyes, a cherished work naturally comes into view. What makes such a work extraordinary lies not in monumentality or spectacle, but in the way it comes, through daily companionship, to hold one’s gaze and feeling. In this sense, the study becomes a point of departure for inward and imaginative wandering: within a finite space, one enters into exchange with the world of things, and with oneself, while setting out toward the boundless.

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This brings to mind the well-known story of Mi Fu bowing before a stone. To others, it may have seemed nearly obsessive, yet within it there was something profoundly tender. Through Mi Fu’s eyes, one seems able to perceive the spirit within those extraordinary stones. It also suggests that those who keep a shuzhai are often able, among the ten thousand things, to recognize the object that speaks to their own spirit. In such a moment, the object is no longer merely an object: it may become a reflection of one’s character, an image of one’s inner state, or a companion on the desk, present through the passing of days and nights.

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Such are the works that belong in a shuzhai.

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What Where the Mind Roams Among Things — Elegance of the Study: Hanging Art proposes, then, is not a reconstruction of an ancient scholar’s studio, but a way of inhabiting the study that moves across past and present while remaining deeply connected to life today. It speaks to a cultivated pleasure in looking, studying, choosing, and refining one’s taste—one that continues to enrich the many ways people live with space, and that, in a quiet sense of fulfillment, brings them closer to the life they aspire to live.

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