Bio-morph
Liu Shiming Jing Huang Manami Ishimura
Lulú Osnaya Sangwoo Yoo Sergei Zinchuk
Time
June 12- August 28, 2026
Location
15 E 40th St., 5th Floor
New York, NY 10016
11am - 6pm (Mon- Fri)
Co-presented By
BEIJING HENGAN TIANRUN INVESTMENT CONSULTANT CO., LTD.
Public Events
Opening Reception
June 12 | 6 - 8pm
Surviving the Art World
- Tips on funding and opportunities for artists
June 13, 2026 | 11am–12:30pm
What does it actually take to build a sustainable life in the arts? Join Ashley Wu of the Liu Shiming Art Foundation and Liu Shiming Grants recipients Manami Ishimura and Sergei Zinchuk for a conversation on navigating the realities of an artistic career. From writing exhibition proposals and artist statements to securing funding, finding residencies, and pursuing teaching opportunities, the speakers will share practical advice and personal experiences from their own paths in the art world.
Bio-morph begins with a small group of Liu Shiming's more experimental works, highlighting a quieter and more abstract dimension of his practice. In these pieces, the body loosens into contour and volume. Handles suggest arms, openings echo torsos, and surfaces feel shaped as much by growth and erosion as by the hand that made them. Figures emerge from and dissolve back into form, nested, contained, always in the process of becoming. These works reveal a distinctive aspect of Liu's sculpture, where organic form and material presence come together with unusual freedom.
The term "biomorph" describes forms derived from living organisms-informed by nature and modeled on the logic of growth and flux. But Bio-morph holds a second meaning: biology that morphs. Life not as stable form but as process. It is this double sense that animates the works of the five recipients of the 2024 and 2025 Liu Shiming Artist Grants, brought together here in their first collective exhibition.
Across installation, sculpture, and material experimentation, the recipients approach this idea in distinct ways, Some works are biomorphic in the immediate formal sense, their shapes drawn directly from the natural systems.
Others locate transformation in process and material-in the gradual accumulation of labor, in organic matter that persists and mutates beyond its original function, in the threshold between birth and loss, Together they form a body of work that is porous and alive, where change is a living condition. The exhibition is at once a testament to Liu Shiming's expansive approach to form and a celebration of the Foundation's grant recipients who carry that spirit forward.
Liu Shiming Artist Grants
Launched in 2023, the Foundation awards five grants of $5,000 each to support emerging artists-those working professionally for at least two but no more than ten years-in the creation or completion of projects that bridge traditional cultural or historical influences with contemporary artistic practice.
These grants are awarded annually through an open online application process and aim to nurture visual artists across a wide range of media and art forms. Final selections are made by a distinguished panel representing a cross-section of the art world, including accomplished artists, critics, scholars, and industry professionals.
In 2025, nearly 1,400 artists from 96 countries submitted applications, reflecting the global reach and impact of the program.
