Cai Lei's 'Invisible Spaces' Exhibition at ICICLE Cultural Space During Art Basel Paris 2025

Beijing-based artist Cai Lei presented his first French exhibition, 'Invisible Spaces,' at ICICLE Cultural Space from October 22 to December 15, 2025, coinciding with Art Basel Paris. The show featured new sculptures and paintings alongside works from his Unfinished Home series, exploring themes of permanence versus decay through materials like cement and acrylic. A Central Academy of Fine Arts graduate with a master's in sculpture, Cai has developed a practice since the early 2010s that blurs sculpture, painting, and architecture. His work investigates spatial perception, memory, and the tension between vision and experience, often employing trompe-l'œil techniques. Central to the exhibition was Left in the Dust (2025), a spiral staircase with missing steps that embodies stability through disintegration. Paintings like Space of Space 20230809 (2023) depict tiled interiors with cracked grids, creating a sense of isolation and confinement. Cai's art uses austere geometries, fractured edges, and shallow recesses to evoke urban transformation in China and the fragility of constructed spaces. The exhibition highlighted how emptiness gains meaning and perception itself becomes a precarious architectural act. Works were courtesy of Tang Contemporary Art, Hong Kong.