Dorp
3-5 Crown Close, Fish Island,
London E3 2JH
Open by appointment only
info@dorpprojects.com
+44 7866 910 778
Artists
Exhibitions
Information
Newsletter
Dorp
3-5 Crown Close, Fish Island,
London E3 2JH
Open by appointment only
info@dorpprojects.com
+44 7866 910 778
Artists
Exhibitions
Information
Newsletter
out of many waters
Tess Wei
04.09 - 02.10.26
London, United Kingdom
Tess Wei (b.1995) lives and works in Philadelphia. Recent exhibitions include Palazzo Grasselli, Cremona (2025), Galerie Moliter, Berlin (2024), and D.D.D.D., New York (2023). Their forthcoming 2026 exhibition at Larry Becker Contemporary Art, Philadelphia will be a companion show featuring other work from this series. This body of work begins with Wei’s consideration of a few astronomers:
“Perinthia’s astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong and their figures are unable to describe the heavens, or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters.” — Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
These astronomers embody an instinctual impulse to relate our earthly circumstances to a heavenly, upward space, and offer narratives that earth is a reflection of a sublime elsewhere. In order to explain what we cannot see, we look skyward. But what happens when earth is monstrous? Is heaven monstrous? We are left to reconcile if this monstrous here is in fact reflecting a ‘heavenly’ elsewhere. Naturally, it becomes necessary to speculate and fantasise about somewhere better than the potential, equally turbulent heaven. When heaven is in disorder there must be somewhere else. This body of work—consisting of graphite works on sandpaper and layered surfaces of sand, wax, and oil—is guided by the purposefully speculative question that might arise in this circumstance: “Does heaven have a sky?” These new paintings offer visions of heaven’s sky. The Night Delivered of Stars, a text written by Kristina Stallvik will accompany the exhibition.