Free-Range Suns: Stella Zhong’s Universe at ROH Jakarta
ROH proudly presents Free-Range Suns, the first solo exhibition in Indonesia by New York–based artist Stella Zhong, which will be on view until 9 November. The exhibition unfolds a sculptural world that transcends spatial and temporal boundaries, a signature to Zhong’s artistic style. The current installation intends to challenge perception and scale, as she transforms the central Jakarta gallery into her own universe; forming an experimental landscape that merges architecture with metaphysical imagery, transforming objects to orbit within their territories.
From the moment visitors step inside, Free-Range Suns feels like entering into another ecosystem. Zhong’s works are hung midair, and they hide behind structures, or remain enclosed within inaccessible chambers. Each object stands independently yet remains connected through what could be called a “language of objects,” made legible only through their relations to one another. Like constellations in the night sky, these pieces resonate in strange proximities and distances, composing a landscape that feels both deeply personal and cosmically vast.
At the heart of this exhibition lies a towering pavilion over five meters tall, clad in gold glass that captures and reflects light. The structure is too large to mimic a dioramic-model, yet too small to be defined as a skyscraper. This ambiguity of scale produces a sense of dislocation, as if the space itself hovers between the real and the imagined. Surrounding this structure are smaller objects: fragile mechanisms, concealed chambers, and delicate, elusive forms that tempt but resist touch.
Zhong’s architectural intervention is her largest project to date, and draws a conceptual line between experimental urban landscapes such as Jakarta and Shenzhen, across the cities where she grew up. Her radiant pavilion reflects an ahistorical imagination where humans, objects, and environments exchange roles freely. Within this space, the boundaries between subject and object blur.
Born in China in 1993, Zhong studied at the Rhode Island School of Design before earning her MFA in Sculpture from Yale University. Her practice fuses scientific precision with personal sensibility, often resulting in forms that are geometric yet soft. Across international exhibitions from Shanghai to New York, Zhong continues to explore the thresholds between the cosmic and the domestic, the monumental and the microscopic.
The exhibition is accompanied by stella, a publication designed by Kyla Arsadjaja featuring essays and interviews by Sheau Yun Lim, CJ Salapare, and Martin Germann. Extending the universe of Free-Range Suns into text, the book deepens the conversation around materiality, imagination, and the architecture of perception within Zhong’s artistic practice.
