What does the present moment look like through the eyes of hundreds of artists? If HERE and NOW 2025 is any indication, it’s layered, contradictory, tender—and pulsing with urgency.
Over 28,000 people visited Gallerium’s expansive two-month digital exhibition this summer—a virtual gathering of contemporary responses to the world we’re all trying to navigate. From May 10 to July 10, the platform became a portal into how artists are absorbing, processing, and reflecting this shared, chaotic stretch of time. And there’s something fitting—maybe even necessary—about encountering that collective voice online, where so much of our real life now unfolds.
The call was broad: capture the present, create the future. Artists responded in ways both direct and oblique—offering work that spoke to displacement, digital saturation, spiritual rituals, collapsing ecosystems, protests, prayers, and long silences. No one attempted to define “now.” Instead, the exhibition made space for complexity—the kind that resists categorization.
Among the standout contributions was A Flower Thinks Back by Liying Peng, a UX and visual designer and artist whose work lingers at the intersection of cultural narrative and digital experience. Her visual language—collage-driven, tonally restrained, and typographically fractured—feels both deeply personal and structurally precise. The piece navigates the emotional topography of memory and identity through the lens of digital collage. It’s quiet, but insistent. Peng’s work has been shown in over 20 international exhibitions and recognized by institutions like the Red Dot Award and iF Design Award, yet what resonates most is her ability to articulate vulnerability within systemized visual environments.
Launched and curated by Gallerium—a platform with over 3 million visitors across its past exhibitions—HERE and NOW embraces the expanded possibilities of virtual curation. Participating artists were given permanent digital profiles, integrated sales tools, and international visibility through syndication partners such as ARTSY and The Book of Arts. The exhibition also offered real-time feedback, engagement metrics, and promotional assets—positioning itself as a platform for connection and legacy as much as for artistic display.
For Peng, whose practice continually examines the boundary between structure and sentiment, HERE and NOW deepened her exploration of memory, cultural belonging, and digital mediation. In this context, A Flower Thinks Back represents a natural evolution of her work—subtle in expression, yet uncompromising in precision.
HERE and NOW 2025 arrives at a moment when online exhibitions have evolved from contingency to cultural legitimacy—not just a substitute for physical space, but a medium with its own logic and reach. Gallerium embraced this fully, offering a meeting ground unbound by borders or gatekeeping. It framed the present not as something fixed, but as a living archive—and art as the vessel through which we hold, question, and carry it forward.
To view Liying Peng’s featured work in this exhibition, visit:
HERE and NOW 2025 – Gallerium
Reach out to Liying Peng for professional partnerships via:
Liying Peng | LinkedIn
