Stonecube, An Initial Language of No-Time Consciousness

石村块: 无时间意识的初始语言

STONECUBE: The Initial Language of No-Time Consciousness

Opening January 9, 2026 | Memor Museum, New York

New York, NY — Memor Museum is pleased to present STONECUBE: The Initial Language of No-Time Consciousness, a major contemporary art exhibition by artist Stone Chun Shi, opening January 9, 2026.

This exhibition is neither a conventional art show nor a retrospective. Instead, it examines how an artistic language comes into being—how it gradually emerges through decades of lived experience, sustained inquiry, and continuous reinvention.

Rather than focusing on what the artist has painted, the exhibition asks a deeper question: how a language is formed, tested, and revealed over time, through life, and through consciousness.

An Artist of Continuous Crossing

For more than forty years, Stone Chun Shi has worked across painting, calligraphy, music, film, design, and technology. His career has unfolded not as a linear ascent, but as a sequence of returns, ruptures, and restarts.

Trained in painting in China and later shaped by New York’s contemporary art movements, Stone relocated to New York in the late 1980s. Years of cultural displacement, identity shifts, and cross-disciplinary exploration profoundly informed his artistic direction.

At multiple moments of public recognition—across New York, Europe, and Taiwan—Stone chose to step away from stability and visibility, repeatedly returning to uncertainty in pursuit of a question that never left him:

Where does the true life value of art reside?

STONECUBE: An Initial Language

Through long-term experimentation and inner exploration, Stone dismantled his own accumulated methods and began again from zero. From this process, Stonecube gradually emerged.

Stonecube is not a style, nor a system of symbols. It is an initial language, composed of color units, rhythm, structure, and states of consciousness. Within this language, time is no longer linear. It becomes something that can be suspended, folded, or traversed—what the artist describes as No-Time Consciousness.

Each work represents not a final result, but a moment within an ongoing process: a visible trace of consciousness in formation.

A Spatial Narrative of Consciousness

Installed across multiple floors of Memor Museum’s historic townhouse, the exhibition brings together key works from the 1980s to the present, along with archival materials, films, manuscripts, and cross-media experiments.

Organized as a spatial trajectory rather than a chronological survey, the exhibition invites visitors to move through successive states of awareness—witnessing how the Stonecube language emerges, stabilizes, and continues to expand.

This is not only an exhibition to be viewed, but a path to be walked.

An Open-Ended Inquiry

STONECUBE: The Initial Language of No-Time Consciousness does not seek to define or conclude Stone Chun Shi’s artistic legacy. Instead, it presents an artist engaged in more than forty years of continuous questioning—of art, of time, and of life itself.

In doing so, the exhibition proposes a broader reflection on how new artistic languages may still arise in contemporary art—not through acceleration or spectacle, but through sustained attention, lived experience, and consciousness.

“The Last Marilyn Monroe” Solo Show at Memor Museum

On View from August 2025 @ 1130 Madison Ave. New York, NY 10028

石村藝術空間

Gallery Of Stone’s Artwork

275 5th Ave, 2nd Floor, NYC

Eleven Stonecube paintings by Stone Chun Shi are currently on long-term display in a private space on the second floor of Yi Xin Tang on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, New York. Yi Xin Tang has thoughtfully transformed its original private tea room and cultural space into an exclusive gallery for Stone Chun Shi’s works, providing a refined and tranquil environment for collectors and potential buyers. Here, visitors can closely appreciate Stone Chun Shi’s unique calligraphic oil painting technique and immerse themselves in the profound cultural and artistic significance of his creations.

China Institute Artist Talk & Musical Performance with Stone Chun Shi

Artist Talk and Musical Performance with Stone Chun Shi

November 22, 2024 – New York

The Food & Wine Club hosted an exclusive evening at China Institute, featuring an artist talk and musical performance by contemporary artist Stone Chun Shi. Nearly a hundred distinguished guests gathered for an immersive experience blending art, music, and fine dining, curated by China Institute.

The highlight of the evening was Stone Chun Shi’s spontaneous blues-inspired musical performance, which captivated the audience with its raw emotion and deep resonance. A renowned Feng Shui master described the performance as radiating immense energy, expressing a strong desire to collaborate with the artist.

Adding to the evening’s cultural significance, Li Zhenzhong, director of the Antique Legend Museum, presented a Qing Dynasty Qianlong Famille Rose Celestial Sphere Vase, displayed alongside Stone Chun Shi’s artwork depicting the same historic masterpiece—a rare and symbolic reunion.

The event, flawlessly organized and hosted by co-chair Sophia Sheng, also featured stunning AI-generated visuals by film and AI expert Binghe, receiving widespread acclaim.

The evening was a true celebration of artistic mastery, cultural heritage, and spiritual energy, leaving guests inspired and deeply connected.

Jason McCoy Gallery

A Private Show

May 27 - June 5, 2024

Inspired by the legacy of Jackson Pollock, ARGOKNOTS is a conceptual space of alchemy between the East and the West.

The meaning of ARGOKNOTS is comprised of two words: Argo representing Jason’s ship (in the sea between two cultures) and Knots being the living links connecting the past with the future. This show intends to merge a rich heritage of art between the two cultures, exploring the dialogue that occurs in natural evolution from one culture to another. 

Jackson Pollock’s “Stone Head” c. 1932-4 (CR1042) is at the core of this interaction. 

At the fountainhead of Abstract Expressionism, Jackson Pollock’s influence cannot be measured, however, we can explore the core of his inspirations, which perhaps are contained within one of his earliest works, "Stone Head”. Pollock’s only existing figurative work, subtle and yet mysterious, "Stone Head" was made at the outset of his career as an artist -- intended to be held in the hand in an intimate gesture of existential questioning.

Stone Chun Shi is a Chinese native (b. 1963) who left the mainland for the Western World in the 1980’s and found fame first as the face of MTV Asia. Before music however, he had studied calligraphy and painting and these early influences helped mold his perspectives on Art – he is at the core a Chinese painter, despite living and working in New York ever since. Subject matter for him, as well as painting, is a zen meditation. At heart a colorist, Stone creates perfect ‘cubes’ of color mixing oils and applying them in thick but micro-brush strokes on large canvases based on core precepts of Chinese calligraphy. His subjects range from themes of collective power to specific esoteric objects, where every pixelated ‘cube’ of the work is created in equal harmony of stroke, imbuing the resulting image as a field of energy and/or deep meditation. 

In juxtaposition, Stone’s “Stone Head” inspired by and paired with Pollock’s immediately proposes a field of intrigue, mystery and dialogue. It also opens the door to Stone’s other work, which begins to examine the way in which modern Chinese art looks to the West, all the while remaining true to its core. Some of Stone’s other paintings, inspired from Eastern subjects (but now from an adopted Western point of view) range from traditional ‘Plum Blossoms’ to Li Bai’s Shangyang Post, pushing this dialogue another step further.

19 Howard Street NYC

June 2023 - August 2023

On June 23, 2023, Stonecube Art Association held an exhibition for artist Stone Chun Shi in SoHo at 19 Howard Street, New York City, which achieved great success.

The exhibition showcased thirteen pieces of Chun Shi's Stonecube oil paintings. 

Stonecube is a unique artistic language using Chinese calligraphy created by Stone. With specially mixed oil colors on traditional canvas, he paints cubes as if writing Chinese characters. Each cube has a different color, but the shapes, sizes, and thicknesses are remarkably similar. Up close, they resemble abstract cubes of various colors, but from a distance, they form a photo-realistic landscape, characters, and scenery.

Chun Shi rarely participates in exhibitions primarily because his painting style is highly challenging, and each artwork has a long creation cycle, resulting in a limited number of pieces. This art exhibition was held to support the nonprofit art organization Stonecube Art Association's Art Saves Space initiative. Art Saves Space is a philanthropic activity that transforms vacant commercial spaces in the New York City area into suitable exhibition venues, providing free exhibition spaces for New York artists.

As a private exhibition, many of Stone’s friends, collectors, and artist acquaintances attend the show. Everyone was deeply impressed by his recent work.