Phil Zheng Cai


Contact


Systemetic Critique - Open Kitchen


Open Kitchen 002 - Fusion
Open Kitchen 001 - Assembly


  • Other Curatorial Projects


Internet Archaeology
Split Level
The Duet’s Carnival
Tone Check: The Skins of Korean Contemporary Painting
At-Will Adaptation: The Exhibition, A Residency-then-Exhibition
At-Will Adaptation: The Residency, A Residency-then-Exhibition
(In)directions: Queerness in Chinese Contemporary Photography
Alienation ?
TRACES


  • Writings


Jenny Jisun Kim:  Verses on Oxherding
A New Topology in Chinese and Vietnamese Contemporary Photography
Hot Coffee conversation, Anh Nguyen, Felisa Nguyen, and Huyen Tran
A Mirrored Interview
The Estate of Joshua Caleb Weibley at CHART Gallery asks if we still want to play
Hyeejin Bae: Eye Candy
Nomad Photography
queerness, chinese, contemporary, photography, (in)directions
Cynthia Gutiérrez at Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil
Wu Chi-Tsung solo exhibition at Katina Museum of Art
Xiong Wei: Becoming the Masses Amongst Elites
What has to be NFT’d?
Jean-Luc Moulène Solo Exhibition at Miguel Aubrey Gallery
Yoan Capote Solo Exhibition at Jack Shainman Gallery
Take a Step: Phil Zheng Cai on the Opening of M+ Museum








This presentation was part of Split Level’s inaugural exhibition October 2 – 4, 2025.





Link to Split Level Fair


SPLIT LEVEL brings together a selection of young galleries focused on championing emerging artists working in a wide range of media. 

Hosted by Rimadesio (New York) SPLIT LEVEL takes a playful approach to installation within this design-centered space. A schedule of performances and talks will be offered throughout the fair’s run, encouraging visitors to engage with artworks, gallerists, and artists on site.

With the inaugural edition of SPLIT LEVEL, Eli Klein Gallery hosts a solo presentation of artist Yang Shuai. Her practice critiques the measurement-based épistémè that erodes subjectivity and authenticity. She engages with sculpture and painting at Split Level, embedding the philosophy of printmaking (multiplicity, identicality, plurality, etc.) as a foundational conceptual threshold, to reveal how institutional systems impose artificial order on an organic world. 

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Influenced by the philosophy of printmaking, Yang Shuai’s process is marked by layering, repetition, and multiplicity—techniques that serve as metaphors for the body’s cyclical and interdependent experience of space, time, and sensation. The language of her recent sculpture work draws an analogy to the moment of “pulling the print”—a gesture characterized by lightness, obliqueness, and a lingering sting.

Reframing herself as the axis of experience, Yang incorporates anatomical forms, astronomical diagrams, and malleable materials into her paintings to question the politics of measurement and scale. Through process-engaging strategies and by suspending parts from the normalized episteme, she works toward transforming the measured self into the measuring self- and invites us to reexamine the world-image of the “human.”

[Special thanks to Jaqueline Cedar for making this project possible]














Yang Shuai, How Much Is It No.3, 2024. Wood, graphite, and found frame. 19 1/2 x 28 3/4 inches (49.5 x 73 cm).

Yang Shuai, Stepmother No.8, 2025. Wood and steel. 18 x 11 x 6 inches (46 x 28 x 15 cm).

Yang Shuai, Stepmother No.7, 2025. Wood, steel. 8 x 7 x 2 inches (20.3 x 17.8 x 5 cm).