Blue and Violet:
The Dialogue of Time
Zhang Xiaoming's Solo Exhibition
EXHIBITION DETAILS
Glass Theatre
Artist:
Ioana Baltan
Curator:
Xu Ziyan
Producers:
Guo Jianguang
Shen Shufan
Organizer:
XIMA GALLERY
Heng Art Museum
Support unit:
GARDEN INSPIRATION
Agri-Building Tourism
Opening: April. 05, 14:30
April. 05 – April. 23, 2026
No. 9, Lingfeng Street, Zhuantang Sub-district, Xihu District, Hangzhou City
Images are performing…
Every uploaded selfie is an audition. Every filter adjustment is a repositioning of stage lights. Social media is not a mirror — it is a panopticon theatre where the audience is everywhere and actors never leave the stage. Ioana Băltan's canvases document what happens backstage.
Băltan (b. 1993, Romania, based in London) has built a sustained practice around the socially constructed image of women — interrogating how beauty standards and digital culture discipline the body and reshape self-perception.Glass Theatrebrings her work into a new context: a city with its own distinct social media ecosystem and its own history of bodily regulation, testing the reach and tension of these images across cultural boundaries. This is her first solo exhibition in China.
Act One. Unicorns, lollipops, Barbie houses — Ioana constructs a hyper-feminine visual ecosystem that follows the logic of the anti-Bildungsroman: not moving forward into the unknown, but moving back toward what was once familiar and has since been forgotten. Beneath the pink dreamscape lies the systematic fetishisation of the female body by consumer industries and patriarchal ways of seeing — a process that begins in childhood.
Act Two. Through hyper-staged, symbolically charged scenes, Ioana restores what has been labelled "female anxiety" to its true nature: a structural condition produced by repetition, control, and discipline — not a personal failing. Glossy surfaces, silky fabrics, pastel tones. This visual language is seductive. That is precisely what makes it dangerous.
Act Three. Details extracted from monumental compositions are distilled into fragments of gesture and gaze — small-format works presented across the gallery's 8 enclosed arched doorways. They interrupt the exhibition's larger narrative. Each arch is a threshold. Each work suspends the same question:in this performance, was your participation ever truly voluntary?
There is no curtain call between acts, because this performance never truly began — it has always already been running.
Glass Theatre is free and open to the public. Transparency is itself a technology of power. The glass theatre makes you see yourself being seen — and within that loop of surveillance, transforms existence quietly into performance. But when the feedback loop is named, when the mechanism is identified, the question of who holds the script begins to shift.
Welcome — not as audience, not merely as actors, but as potential scriptwriters, potential directors, potential strikers. This is your theatre. Provided you realise it always has been.
—— Curated by Xu Ziyan, Curator and Art Director of Xima Gallery
Ioana Baltan
Ioana Băltan (b. 1993, Dragomirești, Dâmbovița) lives and works in London. She attended the National University of Arts, Bucharest, where she obtained a BA degree in painting in 2015. The same year, Băltan obtained the Teaching Training Department’s BA degree issued by the same institution. She continued her studies at The Brera Fine Arts Academy in Milan with a scholarship and got an MA Degree in Strategies of Creation in Painting, released by the National University of Arts, Bucharest.
Băltan’s paintings reveal her strong preoccupation with contemporary approaches to the female figure. Her large-scale compositions are thought of as a body of visual research on portraying feminine archetypes with a strong focus on beauty standards /and body image on social media. In her work, she captures the contrast between the image of contemporary glamour and the soft brutality of beauty standards. The idealised female figures are often placed between luxurious settings and deranged tables with broken make-up and pills, highlighting the violence women subject their bodies to in order to attain physical perfection.
Education:
Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts Painting, National University of Arts, Bucharest 2015
Bachelor’s Degree in Teaching Training, National University of Arts Bucharest 2015
Master’s Degree Scholarship in Fine Arts, Brera Fine Arts Academy Milan - 2016
Master’s Degree in Fine Arts Painting, National University of Arts Bucharest -2017
Postgraduate Scholarship - Gallery Assistant in Beaconsfield Gallery Vauxhall London - 2018
Artist CV:
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
Fantastyfrolia - A Painted Tale with Tints of Marzipan, IOMO Gallery, 2024
Feast of the Immortals, Maggio Art Consultancy x Artsy, 2023
Anima Damnata, Go Contemporary Gallery, solo show, Bucharest, 2015
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
Beyond The Castle, LIAN Gallery, Hangzhou, China, 2025
Aprons, Lipstick and Everything Unsaid, IOMO Gallery, Bucharest, 2025
The Blooming Dartemoor, LIAN Gallery, Hangzhou, China, 2025
Summer Group Show, 19KAREN Gallery, Queensland, Australia, 2025
Hair Stories, ART SAFARI, Bucharest, 2024
SOUND & VISION, ART ON A POSTCARD X THE AUCTION COLLECTIVE, London, 2024
Hey! Teacher! Leave Us, Kids, Alone!, A66 Gallery, Mallorca, 2024
Midsummer Group, A66 Gallery, Mallorca, 2024
The passerby who stays, group show, Koppel X, 2023.
Arte Vi.Ve, Biennale of Viterbo, group show, Venice, 2022.
Metaverse x Maggio Art Consultancy, London, 2022.
RA Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2020-2021
Group exhibition, Candid Art Trust, London, 2018.
Art Safari Exhibition, Go Contemporary Gallery, Dacia Palace, Bucharest, 2016.
FAIRS
ART021, Shanghai Art Fair, 2025 - XIMA Gallery
RAD Art Fair, Hotel Caro, Bucharest, 2024 - IOMO Gallery
PUBLICATIONS
Women: From Unicorns to Pets, Artmajeur Magazine, 2023
Issue no 2 ‘Tendencies in Painting’, London Paint Club, 2022
GENERAL ENQUIRIES
CN +86 17758007594
CN +86 13588191984
LOCATIONS
Lan Art Center: No. 2596, Boao Road, Yingfeng Street, Xiaoshan District, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, Chinia
Heng Museum: Intersection of Lingfeng Street and Xusi Road, Qutang, Xihu District, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China
OPENING HOURS
Tuesday-Friday
12pm-6pm
Copyright © 2025 Xima Gallery