Kan Xuan explores landscape and time in A Slope by the Sea at Galleria Continua

Galleria Continua presents A Slope by the Sea, a solo exhibition by Chinese visual artist Kan Xuan, who is known for her experimental and video art works. The art exhibition, on view from September 1 – December 5, 2026, at the gallery’s location in Beijing, China, brings together two new video works by the contemporary artist that were filmed between 2020 – 2025: the eponymous A Slope by the Sea and Announcing Stations. “The former focuses on China's numerous river estuaries, while the latter documents the stations and towns along the Chinese Eastern Railway in the Northeast region,” Galleria Continua explains.

Alongside these two central video installations, the contemporary art exhibition also presents a selection of Xuan's recent and earlier short videos and sound art pieces, extending the exhibition's exploration of the Chinese landscape and its relationship with the passage of time. “In the face of vast historical time and geographical topographies, the exhibition presents an endlessly recurring present that resists any projection of meaning, as well as an extreme materiality that cannot be absorbed by grand cultural or ecological narratives,” the art gallery notes in the show's description.

The show is presented within a spacious, dimly lit gallery space, where video projections and installations, both big and small, are arranged in sparse rooms, bringing multiple landscape scenes into view simultaneously. Images of waterways, riverbanks, trees and stretches of land create a layered visual, immersive experience.

Through repetitive visual rhythms and subtle variations, the Chinese artist’s works invite viewers into what Galleria Continua describes as ‘the lavish heterogeneity of duration’—a slower mode of looking that creates space to scrutinise, observe and take measure of the world beyond the accelerating pace of contemporary life.