CLC Gallery Venture is pleased to present Toys and Whispers, Whispers and Toys, showcasing a selection of recent works by artists Henk Visch (The Netherlands, 1950) and Nabuqi (Inner-Mongolia, 1984) that explore the autonomy of sculpture and how it extends visible and invisible bodies into space.

Henk Visch considers the human body as an archive of memories and experiences. His gestural sculptures open onto a mysterious terrain where literature, music, personal history, mythology, and global politics converge—yet are expressed through intuitive forms. In the exhibition, several figures of varying heights stand in solitary presence, their age, gender, and sexual characteristics remain deliberately ambiguous. With similarly diminished heads, expanded torsos, and more simplified limbs than before, they appear as kin, tribes, or vessels for an ineffable emotional current.

Aluminum is the primary material used by Visch in this exhibition. For the artist, the corrosion-resistant surface of the medium shields his solitary figures, keeping them pristine and self-contained. The smooth, semi-reflective surfaces resist disclosing the trauma, joy, or history they hold. Yet emotion asserts itself—seeping out through twisted, distended, or swollen structures. This tension reaches its apex in All in One, a multi-limbed, futuristic figure caught mid-transformation. Its bulbous joints and fleshy articulations suggest a body on the verge of movement, yet suspended—a dance held in permanent anticipation. Titles such as Broken Heart, Dancing Leaf, and Dream Catcher evoke Native American naming traditions, which for Visch signify both human suffering and the possibility of new stories born from the spirit of language.

Notably, sparse, vibrantly painted marks appear on the surfaces of several works. According to the artist, these function as companions—evidence that someone has been here: “I have been touched, someone was here, someone else… I am not alone.” In Mother—the only work in the exhibition to feature a symmetrical pair—two hunched figures are joined by a chain of red beads that falls between their necks in the shape of an “M.” This small-scale piece nods to Louise Bourgeois’s iconic depictions of motherhood: the red M becomes a scab, a mark of punishment, an unsevered umbilical cord. Here, in a scale far smaller than life, universal emotion erupts with startling intensity.

Sculpture embodies a reciprocal inquiry between human and object—a relationship that Henk Visch and Nabuqi approach from opposing paths, meeting in the middle. Visch’s contemplative figures verge on becoming landscapes, while Nabuqi’s geometric forms stand upright, change posture, and exhibit human traits. Throughout her practice, Nabuqi often positioned objects and humans in equal, dynamic relation: using spheres to symbolize gatherings of people in public space, or constructing installations that invite viewers to enter spatial structures. In this exhibition, she continues her exploration of play with her "Toy" series—interactive sculptures made of lines, planes, and geometric forms. Scattered across the floor, walls, and tables, these sculptures resist easy categorization: brightly colored, some with rich textures, others smooth and elegant, they hover between modernist sculpture (objects to be contemplated) and domestic items (objects to be used).

Their approachable charm lies in their tactility—many components can be rotated, stacked, or nested, inviting viewers to connect through touch, setting the pieces into motion like a dance. This flexible mobility centers around a lightweight core or spine, from which more voluminous and complex forms extend—resembling limbs and organs, evoking a sense of kinship. The effect recalls Francis Picabia’s whimsical mechanical drawings, where image supersedes function—drawings he described as portraits or manifestos of the human condition.

Yet these sculptures do not overtly invite interaction, and their metallic surfaces lack tactile warmth–setting them apart from Nabuqi’s earlier work. In prolonged solitude, they seem to revert to the pure geometry of inorganic matter—merely toys. At the same time, in their detachment from human touch, they become something other, beings beyond us: in a state of stillness that implies motion, of readiness without action. This poised contradiction lies at the heart of the series. In one group of works, however, Nabuqi radically steps away from interactivity. Three bronze sculptures stand like immovable miniature monuments—a mountain peak with a flag, an angular stand, an arched cover. But the white flag hints at surrender; the stand is cast from soft rope; the cover recalls the ghostly cloth from a magician’s trick—what lies beneath already vanished. As in many of the artist’s recent works, where beginnings and ends blur or gravity is overturned, these seemingly fixed objects are unmoored, quietly unfastening from meaning.

Throughout the exhibition, both artists ’works share qualities of slenderness, imbalance, and ambiguity. They avoid the isolating pedestal, instead extending into space, leaving visible traces of the hand. Here, the boundary between figuration and abstraction has long slipped into the river of the past. In its place, human and non-human forms continually shift and trade places across both artists’ practices—rising and receding, calling upon viewers to locate themselves within the flow. The exhibition space becomes a forest without vegetation, where intense or subdued emotions, ghostly memories, and flickering shadows drift. To encounter them, one might trace the path beneath their feet, sense the light and breath between objects, and listen for their silent whispers.