WHEN VISION
REFUSES TO EXPLAIN
-Open Call


 Artists are expected to explain, audiences are trained to interpret, and artworks are often reduced to objects of translation. The autonomy of visual art — once regarded as the purest form of perception — has been gradually framed and weakened by language.

When Vision Refuses to Explain seeks to suspend this habit of interpretation.
This exhibition invites artists to participate in an experimental field without text — no artist statements, no conceptual descriptions, no thematic directives. Instead, it encourages a direct encounter between the artwork and the viewer, free from linguistic mediation.

Within this space emptied of explanation, artworks reclaim their agency.
Viewers are invited to confront the silence, ambiguity, and uncertainty of vision — to ask:
Must visual art be understood?
Beyond language, how else can art narrate?
When “meaning” withdraws, can vision itself become a language of existence?


Jury: Gene Sasse, Xiaorui Zhang, Shuai Xu

Venue: Sasse Museum of Art, Pomona, California