Vol.06 BEI's Exhibition - "Summer in ...... ?"

The summer of 2026 seems rainier than usual.

Weather alerts keep appearing on our phones: “Beijing has already received seven times as much rainfall as it had by this time last year!” The exclamation mark suggests that this is no ordinary summer. The unending rain has softened the once-clear outline of the season—and perhaps our sense of time along with it.

This rain-soaked summer seems to have carried us into a dream in motion.

Artist Yueci Luo, affectionately known as Luoluo, trained in architecture. She is an avid reader, a devoted maker of mamehon—Japanese miniature books—and a lover of Jingju, or Peking opera. Above all, she is an attentive observer of everyday life, always ready to reach for her pencils and brushes and preserve a fleeting feeling on paper.

At first, Luoluo may appear quiet and reserved. Once you know her, however, you begin to notice the candour and spirited confidence of a Beijing woman beneath her gentle manner. This apparent contrast also lives within her paintings: they are delicate yet free, tender yet unconstrained. Behind their lightness lies an expressive energy, reminiscent of the sweeping movement of a sleeve in Peking opera.

The works in this exhibition are Luoluo’s attempts to catch hold of dreams.

In dreams, perhaps there are not four distinct seasons. Perhaps there is only summer. The past and the future quietly overlap; colours drift like pigments softened by rain. Streams, trees, fruit and stones grow freely between memory and imagination.

Perhaps this is because so many unforgettable stories seem to unfold in summer. Summer gives us the longest days and the fullest expression of life. Memories of encounters and departures, of growing and imagining, often seem inseparable from this season.

Luoluo describes the landscape of her childhood:

“There was a lotus pond, wildflowers and grasses, towering trees, and stones in the stream.”

Nature is not merely something she depicts. It is a lasting companion, held deep within her memory. The landscapes contained by the edges of the paper have never stopped growing. They continue to spread through memory, flourish in dreams, and now emerge before our eyes.

Luoluo once said to me, “No two pears are the same.”

To her, colours and forms carry their own temperaments and personalities. She is fascinated by the singular qualities that exist within what first appears familiar, looking at the world with warmth and tenderness and creating what she calls “forms with feelings.”

To look is to make room in time.

Within this almost weightless pause, we can step away from everyday life and enter another world—one that is slower, softer and less clearly defined. The colours of the dream quietly enter our consciousness. The landscape continues to grow, and time briefly loses its boundaries.

In the summer of 2026, come and dream with Luoluo and BEI at Fugger.

Qiang
Curator, BEI

* More works from the exhibition will be shared on Instagram @beitheshop.