For nearly two decades, Ramiken has occupied a singular position within New York’s contemporary art landscape. Founded in 2009 by Michael Egan, the Lower East Side gallery has built its reputation on a willingness to embrace artists whose practices resist convention, championing ambitious work that sits at the intersection of sculpture, performance, conceptual inquiry, and social observation. Rather than adhering to a particular aesthetic or market trend, Ramiken has consistently fostered practices that challenge expectations and expand the possibilities of contemporary art.
That spirit is evident in “Benches, or Find a Friend at the Y,” the gallery’s current solo exhibition by New York-based artist Zhiliang Zhao. On view through July 11, the presentation brings together a new body of sculptures alongside a Super 8 film, offering a meditation on public space, community, and the subtle choreography of everyday human interaction.
Born in China and now working in New York, Zhao has developed a practice that explores the emotional and social dimensions embedded within objects and built environments. His sculptures often occupy an ambiguous territory between furniture, architecture, and figuration, transforming familiar forms into enigmatic structures that seem simultaneously functional and symbolic. In this exhibition, the artist turns his attention to one of the most commonplace elements of the public realm: the bench.
The Bench as a Site of Encounter
Installation view of Zhiliang Zhao’s “Benches, or Find a Friend at the Y” at Ramiken, courtesy of the artist and Ramiken.
At first glance, the works appear rooted in utility. Constructed from pigmented Rockite cement, MDF, and steel, they possess the material language of infrastructure and urban design. Yet Zhao’s benches quickly reveal themselves as something more complex. Their proportions are subtly altered, their forms slightly estranged from their intended function. They seem less concerned with providing a place to sit than with evoking the social possibilities that such places create.
The exhibition’s title, “Benches, or Find a Friend at the Y,” points toward these themes directly. The reference to a YMCA evokes a familiar social environment—one defined not only by physical activity but by casual encounters, conversations, waiting, observation, and community. It is a place where relationships emerge through proximity and routine rather than spectacle. Zhao uses the bench as a vessel for these ideas, transforming an ordinary object into a framework for thinking about how people gather, connect, and coexist.
Several works in the exhibition carry the title Find a Friend at the Y, suggesting variations on a recurring proposition rather than a singular object. The phrase itself feels almost instructional, recalling the optimistic language of community centers while simultaneously introducing a note of longing. In an era increasingly shaped by digital interaction and social fragmentation, the invitation to “find a friend” takes on a quietly poignant resonance.
What makes Zhao’s sculptures particularly compelling is their ability to hold opposing qualities in tension. They are industrial yet intimate, monumental yet vulnerable. Their surfaces retain the weight and permanence of concrete, while their forms suggest bodies, gestures, and relationships. The works appear to carry traces of human presence without ever depicting it directly. Instead, viewers become acutely aware of their own bodies in relation to the objects, imagining the encounters that might unfold around them.
Traces of Presence
Zhiliang Zhao,
“Them,” 2026,
super 8mm film, 4:13 min
Edition of 2 +1AP, courtesy of the artist and Ramiken.
This interest in human presence and absence extends beyond sculpture. The exhibition also includes Them (2026), a four-minute Super 8 film that expands Zhao’s investigation into memory and collective experience. The choice of Super 8 is significant. Its grainy texture and nostalgic visual language evoke personal archives and fleeting recollections, reinforcing the exhibition’s broader concern with the traces people leave behind and the stories embedded within shared spaces.
Across the exhibition, Zhao demonstrates a remarkable sensitivity to the social life of objects. Rather than treating sculpture as a self-contained aesthetic proposition, he approaches it as a catalyst for reflection and interaction. The benches become more than physical structures; they operate as metaphors for gathering, waiting, friendship, and belonging. They ask viewers to consider the ways public environments shape relationships and how seemingly ordinary objects can become repositories of memory and emotion.
An Invitation to Connect
Zhiliang Zhao,
“Three Knocks on the Door,” 2026,
pigmented Rockite cement, ultralight MDF, steel,
95 x 31 x 19 inches, courtesy of the artist and Ramiken.
At Ramiken, these concerns feel particularly resonant. The gallery has long supported artists whose work probes the cultural and psychological dimensions of contemporary life, and Zhao’s exhibition continues that tradition. Through a restrained yet deeply affecting body of work, “Benches, or Find a Friend at the Y” transforms the familiar into something unexpectedly profound. In Zhao’s hands, the humble bench becomes a social sculpture an object through which questions of connection, isolation, and community quietly unfold.
“The benches become more than physical structures; they operate as metaphors for gathering, waiting, friendship, and belonging.”
At a moment when public life feels increasingly fractured, the exhibition offers a timely reminder that the spaces we share and the objects that inhabit them remain powerful sites of encounter. Zhao’s work suggests that even the simplest invitation to sit, wait, or meet can contain the possibility of something larger: a conversation, a memory, or perhaps, as the title proposes, the chance to find a friend.
Zhiliang Zhao,
“Find a Friend at the Y,” 2026,
pigmented Rockite cement, ultralight MDF, steel,
72 x 31 x 18 3/4 inches, courtesy of the artist and Ramiken.
Installation view of Zhiliang Zhao’s “Benches, or Find a Friend at the Y” at Ramiken, courtesy of the artist and Ramiken.
