For Art Basel 2023, Chapter NY presents Rare Tilt, a sculptural-video installation by Stella Zhong. Continuing her eccentric interpretation of physics and topology in relation to the human condition, Zhong’s new body of work catches a glimpse of a world that is just beginning to form its basic elements. These elements experiment with distance and proximity, interchangeability, entanglement, reflection and illusion—properties that pressure against conforming and actualization. By creating a vacuum, the installation magnifies the small outlying forces that begin and withstand transformations.

Set in the dark booth, a sculptural grouping grounds the otherwise scaleless space. Perched on the frontmost sculpture is a luminous form evolved from a folded potato chip and a flattened hyperbolic-paraboloid—both improbable propositions. This form operates as a screening space for a projected video that is viewed by lying down. Dotted around the installation, minuscule and decidedly inorganic objects retreat to the periphery, adhering to and, at times defying certain gravity or logic. In repetition and coming together, life emerges from these inert entities, quietly loosening the edge of their monumental surroundings.

This existential dread and humor collapse into the metaphysical in the silent projected video “Loss of Coherence.” Filmed within entirely analogue constructions, subtle movements weave light and obscurity, fractured spaces and simultaneity into moments of hesitation, amusement, curiosity, and struggle. Departed from exploring the quantum phenomenon of Decoherence, the video observes solitude and the environment that interferes with it.  Art Basel will be the first public presentation of Zhong’s video work.

There is a vastness in Zhong’s work that is anchored in the barely visible and a sense of alienation that gradually loses reference. The large-scale sculptures that stretch across the installation invite us to lie alongside them, like dreaming or star gazing, to take a moment of introspection; the video further expands the angle to face otherness and intimacy. From just the right perspective, a taut string becomes present, pulling unlikely things, beings, matter closer.