I Want to Love with No Fear

Side Room Chapter NY is thrilled to present I Want to Love with No Fear, Craig Jun Li’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. The exhibition features pictures realized in various materials, objects, and machines. Before there was magic, there was you. You sat in an arm chair and ordered me to kneel. When I looked up, there were cracks of lights reflected in your glasses. They looked gorgeous like low frequencies. I thought about the ancient music my father taught me. A bell rang. It was telling the wrong time. “CJ” Craig Jun Li ( born 1998, China) lives and works in New York City. Li’s work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions, including Galeria Filomena Soares, Lisbon; lower_cavity, Holyoke; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Kurtkubin, CDMX; Systema, Marseille; François Ghebaly, LA & New York; Taon, Ivey-sur-Seine; Romance, Pittsburgh; Chris Andrews, Montréal; Rainrain, New York; September Sessions, Stockholm; hatred 2, New York; Prairie, Chicago; and Canal Projects, New York, among others. The exhibition was conceived in conjunction with his solo exhibition, If you were there, you’d know, on view at Emmelines, New York, through January 31, 2026. Li operates a nomadic curatorial project, “Benny’s Video,” currently hosted in a studio sublet in Bushwick.