MANGROVEGALLERY is pleased to announce I Recognized Myself Through You, a duo exhibition featuring recent paintings by Fumika Tsuchitori and Hou Yijie. The exhibition will be on view at Mangrove Gallery, Shenzhen, from 17 January to 3 April 2026.

I Recognized Myself Through You, taking its theme from insights in psychoanalysis and modern psychology on mirroring projection within interpersonal relationships, the exhibition considers how unconscious preferences often conceal a deeper pursuit of self-recognition and identification. While such dynamics are most readily observed in romantic relationships, they may also be understood more broadly, which encompasses phenomena such as idolization or even the reinterpretation of history. This thematic framework emerges directly from the artistic practices of both artists, through which Tsuchitori and Hou each employ a painterly approach to figurative human scenes, consciously engaging with mirrored, projective relationships between the self and the other.

In Tsuchitori’s ongoing exploration of the relationship between “you” and “I,” the emotional intensity of intimacy, where love and hostility intertwine, are approached at a closer range. Her works convey an immediacy rooted in lived experience and are articulated through a fervent, expressive painterly language. By contrast, Hou Yijie, who continues to construct fictional worlds inspired by Wuxia (wandering hero) fantasies, presents a more restrained and scholarly temperament. He brings together romantic, historiographic imagination with the contemporary anxieties, evoking a reflective dialogue between past and present. Together, the artists’ divergent responses to a shared theme activate the exhibition space as a charged field, forming an uneven yet resonant contrast that invites careful and sustained contemplation.