August 27, 2026
Relational (Shirley Tse and Dana Berman Duff)
The Universe Breathes Us
Shoshana Wayne Gallery
July 25 - September 3, 2026
Shirley Tse and Dana Berman Duff
The word 'moon' is in the title of all but one of the artworks in the exhibition The Universe Breathes Us by Shirley Tse and Dana Berman Duff, collaborating as Relational. The non moon work The Breathing Ocean (Portal) (2026) is a video projection that transitions over eight minutes from footage of an Icelandic choir singing a composition by Dana Berman Duff and her husband Alan Duff Berman. While the music of the song fills the space, the imagery begins to dissolve into a soft abstraction of undulating colors and wavy lines that brings to mind the atmospheric phenomena of the Northern lights. The piece begins documenting the group and ends with ambiguous overlapping moon-like circles. Projected on the opposite wall is Duff's The Other Side of the Moon is Not Dark (2025) a large depiction of the moon as seen from the sun, rather than the earths perspective. It rotates almost imperceptibly at a sped up two-hours and thirty-seven minutes.
Occupying the floor between these walls are Tse's Bobbing Moon sculptures. These five delicate pieces are crafted from flexible tent poles, colored plastic screen material held in place by rounded rocks. Each assemblage is a quasi-off balanced construction with a small central sphere suspended within a larger rectangular plane. Holes at the four corners intersect with arched tent poles that elevate the horizontally positioned screens off the ground on a human scale. The five works tilted for the color of their screen material — blue, silver, gold, yellow and metal — become an array of planets (or moons) illuminated from above by spotlights that cast dramatic shadows onto the floor of the otherwise darkened space.
Orkney Moon is a photograph created by Tse in 2025. It depicts a lone circular "ball" in a field of bright green grass. Tse had wrapped a soccer ball with rice paper which was then kicked around a field by her nephew. The stained and battered paper was later removed and then reconfigured into a moon-shaped orb. This object appears in the back gallery as the installation Sun and Moon (2025). It is suspended from the ceiling by a thread and illuminated by the circular white light of a 16mm film projector causing an ever changing shadow on the wall. While there is a spinning reel on the back of the projector, the film is not loaded. However, as it spins, the tail end of the film repeatedly flaps against the apparatus making a strange and disruptive sound.
Tse and Duff first presented The Universe Breathes Us in Reykjavik, Iceland in 2025. Their collaboration is unusual as the pieces were not made together but rather developed individually through an ongoing dialogue. Core to the exhibition is the process of breathing, as well as the relationship between the sun, the moon and the tides. A quote from Yoga Anatomy introduces the exhibition stating: "It is important to note that in spite of how it feels when you inhale, you do not actually pull air into the body ... air is pushed into the body by atmospheric pressure ... in other words, you create the space and the universe fills it." Tse not only wanted to work with another artist she admired (Duff), but to create an installation about relational forces and the environment. The words from Duff and Berman's chorus permeate the experience — "When the space is open, the universe fills it, when the body's ready, the universe fills it, when the self is empty, the universe fills it." Tse and Duff have created a thoughtful, peaceful, and meditative installation that looks within us as breathing bodies and outside at the expansive universe.
The Universe Breathes Us
Shoshana Wayne Gallery
July 25 - September 3, 2026
Shirley Tse and Dana Berman Duff
The word 'moon' is in the title of all but one of the artworks in the exhibition The Universe Breathes Us by Shirley Tse and Dana Berman Duff, collaborating as Relational. The non moon work The Breathing Ocean (Portal) (2026) is a video projection that transitions over eight minutes from footage of an Icelandic choir singing a composition by Dana Berman Duff and her husband Alan Duff Berman. While the music of the song fills the space, the imagery begins to dissolve into a soft abstraction of undulating colors and wavy lines that brings to mind the atmospheric phenomena of the Northern lights. The piece begins documenting the group and ends with ambiguous overlapping moon-like circles. Projected on the opposite wall is Duff's The Other Side of the Moon is Not Dark (2025) a large depiction of the moon as seen from the sun, rather than the earths perspective. It rotates almost imperceptibly at a sped up two-hours and thirty-seven minutes.
Occupying the floor between these walls are Tse's Bobbing Moon sculptures. These five delicate pieces are crafted from flexible tent poles, colored plastic screen material held in place by rounded rocks. Each assemblage is a quasi-off balanced construction with a small central sphere suspended within a larger rectangular plane. Holes at the four corners intersect with arched tent poles that elevate the horizontally positioned screens off the ground on a human scale. The five works tilted for the color of their screen material — blue, silver, gold, yellow and metal — become an array of planets (or moons) illuminated from above by spotlights that cast dramatic shadows onto the floor of the otherwise darkened space.
Orkney Moon is a photograph created by Tse in 2025. It depicts a lone circular "ball" in a field of bright green grass. Tse had wrapped a soccer ball with rice paper which was then kicked around a field by her nephew. The stained and battered paper was later removed and then reconfigured into a moon-shaped orb. This object appears in the back gallery as the installation Sun and Moon (2025). It is suspended from the ceiling by a thread and illuminated by the circular white light of a 16mm film projector causing an ever changing shadow on the wall. While there is a spinning reel on the back of the projector, the film is not loaded. However, as it spins, the tail end of the film repeatedly flaps against the apparatus making a strange and disruptive sound.
Tse and Duff first presented The Universe Breathes Us in Reykjavik, Iceland in 2025. Their collaboration is unusual as the pieces were not made together but rather developed individually through an ongoing dialogue. Core to the exhibition is the process of breathing, as well as the relationship between the sun, the moon and the tides. A quote from Yoga Anatomy introduces the exhibition stating: "It is important to note that in spite of how it feels when you inhale, you do not actually pull air into the body ... air is pushed into the body by atmospheric pressure ... in other words, you create the space and the universe fills it." Tse not only wanted to work with another artist she admired (Duff), but to create an installation about relational forces and the environment. The words from Duff and Berman's chorus permeate the experience — "When the space is open, the universe fills it, when the body's ready, the universe fills it, when the self is empty, the universe fills it." Tse and Duff have created a thoughtful, peaceful, and meditative installation that looks within us as breathing bodies and outside at the expansive universe.