The Phalanx of Nothing

Exhibition of Tan Di

The title The Phalanx of Nothing is drawn from Lu Xun's (鲁迅) This Kind of Warrior（《这样的战士》）, in Wild Grass（《野草》）. On that battlefield without a discernible enemy, resistance takes no single, identifiable form — it lies instead in invisible orders, identities,languages, and appearances.

"Nothing" here does not mean emptiness; it names a force that cannot be directly pointed to, yet is undeniably real. Using old furniture, artworks, and garden-like arrangements, the artist constructs a metaphorical battlefield — one with no material adversary, yet charged throughout with confrontation. Through it, the work explores the solitude of the creative individual, the act of accumulation, and the flux and dissolution of matter itself.

Furniture, artworks, clothing, letters, and plants are reintroduced into a carefully organized space. They are no longer mere traces left behind by someone's daily life; through arrangement, repetition, accumulation, concealment, and absence, they generate new relations among themselves. As objects accumulate, what truly matters becomes ever less visible — an ambiguity that arises both between object and object, and between object and void: even once everything has been placed, something remains that cannot be named.

In this way, the work attempts to produce a structure of looking — one that determines what is seen, what is concealed, what is preserved, and what is forgotten. Entering it, the viewer, too, becomes part of that structure.

Opening: 15.09.2026 18:00

Dates: 15.09-25.09.2026

Address: Fishead Lab, Via Eugenio Camerini 2, 20131, Milano