The Messenger: Toward the Unseen
July 30th - September 1st, 2025
Crossing Art is proud to present The Messenger: Toward the Unseen—Jialu Gao’s debut solo exhibition at our Chelsea gallery—on view from July 30 to September 1, 2025. This exhibition brings together key works from her The Messenger series, which will be displayed to the public for the very first time.
The Messenger: Toward the Unseen is a painting-based exploration of imagery, spirituality, and perceptual consciousness. Artist Jialu Gao introduces her original concept of the messenger-image, guiding viewers toward a spiritual realm that transcends language—difficult to name, yet deeply and intuitively felt. The series, created between 2024 and 2025, unfolds as a painterly experiment into the relationship between image, spirituality, and consciousness. At its center is a core question: Can imagery serve as a spiritual medium? Through her uniquely developed messenger-images, Gao reimagines how we see—and proposes a new path for visual and spiritual engagement.
The “Unseen” referenced in the title does not refer to a tangible space, but to a deep and primal dimension of consciousness. In this spiritual topography, the image no longer acts as a representation of external reality, but transforms into a messenger of perception and inner awareness. Jialu Gao’s paintings originate from an almost prayer-like state of mind. Paintings to be exhibited like Dreams from the Open Book feature organic, egg-like shapes, abstract faces, and dreamy symbolic elements in rich colors. In a whimsical dreamscape, a book slowly opens, and from between its pages, a blue dove takes flight. Gao emphasizes receiving over creating, allowing each work to become a response that visually reveals itself. Through recurring symbols—doves, letters, waves, city edges—her imagery triggers inner projection, guiding viewers into a visual passage that is non-verbal and non-narrative.
Jialu Gao’s creative path has intentionally diverged from conventional academic training, consistently led by an inward spiritual drive. Her visual language is defined by a deliberate sense of incompleteness—not a technical looseness, but a conceptual openness. This generative approach invites the viewer to become a second messenger: a resonator and participant in the unfolding of meaning. Her paintings are not mere visual expressions, but structures of consciousness made visible—individual spiritual experiences rendered in image-form. Through a disciplined restraint in form and language, her work achieves a rare spiritual intensity and a sustained inner tension.
The Messenger: Toward the Unseen is more than a painting exhibition—it is a meditative inquiry into the relationship between image, awareness, and spiritual presence. The messenger-image functions on visual, perceptual, and metaphysical levels: as a sensory activator, a medium of consciousness, and a vehicle for unnamed resonance. In this age of visual overload and fixed modes of seeing, Jialu Gao’s paintings offer a gentle yet persistent invitation—to pause, to dwell, to return. She does not depict spirituality, but instead constructs its structure through image: a visual pathway of awareness and inner alignment.