SPURS Gallery is pleased to present Sahaloka, Chi Tien Lin Cheng’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. The exhibition runs from October 17, 2026 through November 29, 2026, and features 17 of his recent paintings.
Sahaloka takes its title from the Buddhist term Sahā World, also known as the World of Endurance, a realm where, according to Buddhist belief, beings must endure various forms of suffering. These include birth, aging, sickness, and death; separation from those one loves; coexistence with those one hates; the inability to obtain what one desires; as well as war, unrest, and disaster. It is a world where suffering and joy, good and evil, conflict and peace all intertwine. Yet it is precisely because of this that people are able to know pain and pleasure, to understand themselves and others, and to seek the possibility of transcendence and liberation.
The paintings start from three perhaps unanswerable questions: Where do we come from? Why are we here? Where will we ultimately go? Across the canvases, infants, children, men and women, animals, nature, and unnameable forms approach, cling to, and become entangled with one another, even as they separate, transform, and dissolve. They do not constitute a complete and stable world, but rather resemble afterimages left behind at different stages: birth, growth, desire, intimacy, conflict, loss, regret, and the attempt to rediscover the relationships between the self, the other, and the world.
For Cheng, these images are closely bound to his own life experience. Becoming a father did not make him take the course of life any more for granted. On the contrary, it made life appear all the more contradictory: joy and unease, intimacy and harm can occur simultaneously; we long to protect certain things, yet must also acknowledge our own limitations; and no relationship can ever be fully grasped.
Sahaloka is not a depiction of the world of suffering, nor is it the artist’s personal family memoir. It is closer to a landscape synthesized by Cheng from fragments of his own memory at this particular stage of life. Here, people are born, meet one another, fall in love, suffer, and lose, while also learning to keep going—learning to open themselves and to throw themselves into the world.
This is neither paradise nor hell. This is Sahaloka.
About the artist
Chi Tien Lin Cheng (b. 1996, Taiwan) lives and works in Sanyi, Taiwan. He holds a BA(Hons) Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art, London.
Cheng regards painting as a philosophical visual expression born from the process of reflection on the self, society, and all existence. By observing the tangible objects and the intangible emotions and spirit in daily life, he integrates these insights into his work, expressing a subjective understanding of the subtle Daoist nature of the universe.
This reflective theme instills in him a deep sense of reverence and aspiration toward the wisdom of ancient sages. The artist continuously layers, destroys, dissolves, and blurs the paint, dancing with spontaneity and chance in the process of “deforming” and “reforming”, exploring the narrative potential within boundaries and contours. Cheng uses allegorical and symbolic storytelling to express his understanding and reinterpretation of religious, literary, and artistic references throughout history, along with his contemplation of the phenomenal world, seeking to explore the value, possibilities, and functionality of painting in contemporary society.
Cheng’s recent solo and two-person exhibitions include Sahaloka, SPURS Gallery, Beijing (2024); Journey Into Love, SPURS Gallery, Beijing (2024); The Wheel of Time, Linseed Project, Lyceum Theatre, Shanghai (2022); Embodied Light, two-person exhibition with Yi To, Wilder Gallery, London (2021). Recent group exhibitions include Seeds Out of Line, Sixi Museum, Nanjing (2026); Inside the Frame: Twenty Years in Focus, SPURS Gallery, Beijing (2025); Home is Where is Haunt is, X museum Triennial exhibition, Beijing (2023); Stranger Than Fiction, Galleri Magnus Karlsson, Stockholm (2023); Up in the Air, SPURS Gallery, Beijing (2023); Watch the Fire from the Shore, Linseed Project, Shanghai (2021); Postcards at Hellvi Kännungs, Galleri Magnus Karlsson, Gotland (2021); Deep Cut, The Asylum Chapel Maverick Projects, London (2021); Pith of the Pithless, The Crypt Gallery, London (2020); YIXIANG, No Space, online exhibition (2020); Transience, Chelsea College of Art, London (2019); Being and Becoming, off-site project, London (2019).
