Upcoming Exhibition

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Ballet with the Devil

_{07 June - 16 August 2025}

PODIUM is delighted to present ‘Ballet with the Devil’, a group exhibition that employs the metaphor of a treacherous yet seductive dance with the diabolical to probe humanity’s entanglement and complex interplay with desire. Through the lens of Lacanian psychoanalysis, the artists, including João Gabriel, Shimon Kamada, Dew Kim, Jaewon Kim, Joy Li, and Tao Siqi, dissect and unveil the intrinsic unattainability of human yearnings, and explore the potential transcendence of its ensnarement. Navigating the precarious terrain where fantasy and materiality converge, the works compel the viewer to reevaluate the agency of one’s subjectivity when confronted by manifestations of trauma and anxiety rooted in the psyche. The exhibition opens on 07 June 2025 (Sat) from 2 to 7 PM and is on view till 16 August 2025 (Sat).

Artists
João Gabriel
Shimon Kamada
Dew Kim
Jaewon Kim
Joy Li
Tao Siqi

PREVIEW REQUEST

Drawing from pre-AIDS, 1970s gay pornographic imagery, Portuguese painter João Gabriel creates works that are pervaded with desire, loss, and nostalgia through feathery, dream-like brushstrokes, visualising the inherited trauma and questioning the boundaries of joy, fear, and sexuality in contemporary queer culture. His works were collected by Sunpride Foundation, Hong Kong. Contextualising his sentimental photo archives, Shimon Kamada constructs layered compositions that fuse figuration with abstraction, exploring the fragility of time, the inevitability of loss, and the elusiveness of memory. Kamada invites multiple, often ambiguous interpretations, transforming intimate recollections into universal meditations on nostalgia, alienation, and the porous boundary between reality and dream.

Dew Kim integrates K-pop aesthetics and shamanistic motifs in his multidisciplinary practice spanning videos, installations, and sculptures to address themes such as organised religion, folk beliefs, the body, and queer sexuality. By constructing a theatrical realm of gender fluidity, Kim maneuvers the notions of eroticism and desire to question religious taboos and embrace an idiosyncratic view of pleasure and pain. He previously exhibited in the Museum of Contemporary Art. Busan (2024), Alternative Space Loop, Seoul (2023), Para Site, Hong Kong (2022) and Documenta15, Kassel (2022), among others. His works were recently collected by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul (2025) and Sunpride Foundation, Hong Kong (2024). Meanwhile, Jaewon Kim utilises video, photography, and writing to further explore the discourses regarding queerness and HIV/AIDS. Contextualising the past, present, and future as multi-layered experiences, his works question and trace how the force of the disease reshapes the significance of, and the encounters with the invisible and excluded. His works are in the collection of the Ulsan Art Museum, Korea.

Joy Li explores the tensions in the interactions between everyday objects, animals, and the human body through sculpture and installation. Simplifying while exaggerating the daily mundane items and scenes by recontextualisation, her works intrigue the audience with the carefully staged theatricality and absurdity, allowing them to re-experience and interact with familiar objects in uncanny manners. Lastly, Tao Siqi delves into the desire of all forms through her intense colors, delicate brushstrokes, and characteristic close-up perspective. Her paintings are rooted in her fascination with the body and flesh as a medium of sensibility and sexuality. By creating a tension between beauty and destruction, tenderness and violence, temptation and taboo, her surreal scenes inspire a provocative viewing experience and conjure emotional unease, flickering between pleasure and pain.

Press Release

Installation View

Works

Tao Siqi
A Moment
2024
Oil on linen
50 x 40 cm | 19.7 x 15.7 in