MadeIn Gallery is honored to present our new exhibition, “Bodies In-Between”, in the gallery’s main space, featuring recent works by four artists: Shi Yi, Li Kejin, Wang Ximan, and Mo Shaolong. Throughout the exhibition, the body transforms into an imagined world, implying new perspectives on the material world and life itself. The structured reality of the gallery dissolves into the artists’ evocative expressions—charged with desire, tinged with fantasy, and resonating with the haunting cries of solitude. Within this space, utopia, suspense, and fervent hallucinations arise.

Shi Yi’s paintings draw from the realms of religion, folklore, and mass media. He captures emotionally charged moments and, through bodily language, invites the audience into a psychological space that fosters a deeper understanding of individual emotions and social interactions. The bodily details depicted in his works—such as gestures and facial expressions—serve not only as externalizations of emotions but also as profound cultural and psychological symbols, hinting at the sociocultural structures and ideologies underpinning these actions and expressions.

Li Kejin explores the narrative potential of oil painting as a vessel for memory. For this exhibition, he presents a large-scale work titled Evolutionary Detour. By orchestrating expansive bodily movements and employing tension-filled brushstrokes, Li creates a visual effect rich in suspense, suspending the viewer’s recognition of concrete forms and projecting his psychological dynamics onto the body. In the “Stranger” series, four close-up portraits delicately reveal the inner emotions of the subjects. Through the painted facial motions, Li stages mystery, prompting the audience to speculate on the emotional transformations and behavioral trajectories of these characters.

Dissatisfied with the body being merely a symbol of resistance or disillusionment, Wang Ximan’s per-formances seek to conduct a clinical examination of self and contemporary society. Using materials like liquid gels and solid steel, soft and hard elements engage in a dialogue with the artist’s body. These materials reveal the intertwined processes of trauma, desire, and cultural mediation.

Mo Shaolong regards painting as a means of reflecting on visual empathy and restoring embodied self-awareness. Digital technology perpetually projects past sensations, attitudes, desires, or fantasies onto the present, resulting in an overload of imagery and increasingly automated, superficial emotional expressions. Through his paintings, Mo resists the ease of image consumption, emphasizing a deeper awareness of sentimental expression—especially in response to external stimuli or imagery. His works invite the audience to reevaluate the relationship between individuals and the external world from the perspective of embodied cognition.