2026-02-28 12:15
The “WINDOWS1298 Art Window” project is a year-long initiative jointly launched in 2022 by WS GALLERY (Wuji Gallery) and ShanghART Gallery. It was co-initiated by Wu Bin, founder of W.DESIGN / Wuji, and Shi Yong, Artistic Director of ShanghART Gallery and artist. The project seeks to activate the storefront window at 1298 Huaihai Middle Road as an artistic site, presenting museum-quality artworks that break beyond the confines of the traditional “white cube.” By doing so, it offers audiences an encounter with art that feels both more intimate and more surprising, generating layered viewing experiences. Through the collision of academic discourse and urban everyday life, the project aims to create a hub that integrates media, curating, art, fashion, and experience, committed to promoting artistic practices that provide public, humane, and warm engagements for society.
On March 16, the project welcomed its second participating artist, Liu Yi, presenting the work I Really Want to Like You. The hedgehog and the balloon embody a collision between softness and sharpness. The hedgehog’s natural protective spines isolate it from intimacy; even when hedgehogs attempt to huddle for warmth, the slightest movement may inadvertently wound one another. In the two-minute video I Really Want to Like You, a spiked hedgehog and a balloon are placed within the same space. We anticipate what might happen next, yet when and how it will occur remains suspended.
Through the relationship between the hedgehog and the balloon, the work allows us to better understand and confront our own fears and contradictions. It is, fundamentally, a philosophical reflection on human emotion and relationships.
In existential philosophy, the human being is understood as a free existence, capable of creating meaning and value through choice and action. Yet this freedom is accompanied by countless possibilities and uncertainties, rendering existence permeated with anxiety and confusion. In this sense, the hedgehog may be seen as an entity equipped with a mechanism of self-protection, curling inward to shield itself from harm. The balloon, by contrast, appears light and unstable, liable to drift away or burst at any moment. Both figures represent the uncertainty and risk inherent in human existence, while simultaneously suggesting a self that requires protection and maintenance.
The tension between softness and sharpness embodied by the hedgehog and the balloon mirrors the dilemmas we frequently encounter in interpersonal relationships. We long to form intimate bonds, yet we also harbor a fear of being hurt. This fear is often described as “philophobia,” a fear of love rooted in confusion about the nature and meaning of love itself.
“I really want to like you” describes a fleeting state — one step forward becomes affection, one step back becomes withdrawal. It resembles a transient state in physics, a condition that may collapse in an instant.
It is a negotiation between reason and instinct. Instinct urges us to move forward bravely, yet the possibility of failure can feel unbearable, prompting reason to pull us back. Within this expression lies the helplessness of unattainable desire, the entanglement between aspiration and reality. Every day, we are confronted with such choices.
In the window installation, conical structures symbolizing the hedgehog are introduced, while balloons repeatedly float and collide within the space. In the present moment, we often approach people and situations with caution and hesitation. The life we once courageously desired, the travel plans we once envisioned, even those we once admired, quietly fade from the queue of our affections, sometimes without leaving a trace. And yet, despite this careful distance, they may still coexist — and still, perhaps, like one another.
Related Artists: LIU YI 刘毅
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