Leah Ke Yi Zheng

In ‘Machine(s)’, her first solo exhibition at Layr, Wuyishan-born, Chicago-based artist Leah Ke Yi Zheng continues to confront the conventional role of canvas as passive support in works whose physical shape is integral to their meaning and whose mutable, translucent surfaces are imbued with an almost-bodily presence.

- Hana Ostan-Ožbolt-Haas

By stretching silk over handmade wooden frames to create irregular, parallelogram-shaped supports, Zheng transforms her paintings into delicate, sensuous objects. Unlike the substantial layers of paint that accumulate in traditional oil-on-canvas works, the artist’s acrylic-on-silk technique embraces a combination of brush control and fluidity, as the vibrant pigment seeps into the silk rather than resting on its surface. In this way, Zheng’s paintings do not merely hold an image; they absorb, stain and register traces of her every movement. The result is a surface that does not assert its materiality as a solid plane but, rather, behaves like an interface: porous and reactive. This aspect is particularly evident in ‘Machine(s)’, where Zheng suspends two of her works, Untitled (Machine) (2024) and