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World Island-1, Acrylic on canvas, 170×320cm, 2025

City upon a Hill – s, Acrylic on canvas, 42×25cm, 2025

World Island-4, Tempera and acrylic on wood, 30×40cm, 2025

Mocube is honored to present World Island, Li Yiwen’s third solo exhibition at Mocube. This article features a written exchange between Mocube and the artist regarding the exhibition. In the following interview, "Mocube" is abbreviated as "M," and "Li Yiwen" as "L."

M: This is your third solo exhibition at Mocube, following Turbulence and Synchronic Field, and now World Island. The titles seem to carry a paradoxical poetic feeling—pointing both to the complexity of reality and the solitude of the individual. Could you start by discussing the misinterpretation and transformation of the concept “World Island”? How did you distill this grand geopolitical term into a personal, introspective vision? 

L: "World Island" was originally a concept in geopolitics—a field unfamiliar to me. But at some point, amid my scattered reading, it caught my interest. I bought the book The Geographical Pivot of History and began flipping through it. As I read further, I learned how this theory of geopolitical competition influenced the two World Wars and the global order that followed. It felt distant yet brutal, alien yet faintly connected to every one of us today. Who isn’t a tiny fragment in the grand social tapestry, an ordinary grain of sand in the vast torrent of history? I call it a "misreading" because even if a painter reads books on philosophy, literature, sociology, or physics, they might never fully grasp their true meaning. Sometimes, imagination born of misunderstanding becomes its own kind of creation. For me, as someone who paints, this term triggered a synesthetic vision. Every time it flashed through my mind, I felt a sense of solitude and desolation. I imagined this psychological state as a duality: "island-world." The "island" corresponds to each individual’s enclosed yet fertile inner self, while the "world" is the oceanic reality we inhabit—turbulent, fragmented, cruel, and at times incomprehensible.

M: You've spoken of your repeated visits to unfinished construction projects in second- and third-tier cities – these abandoned structures have become the visual anchor of your current exhibition. On canvas, these forsaken "isolated islands" acquire an almost monumental presence, while simultaneously maintaining the fragile ephemerality of a mirage. Could you elaborate on how your painterly language imbues these ruins with both that "seething emotional undercurrent" and that sense of "breath constricted by reality"?

L: I live on the fringes of Beijing, and over the years I've visited similar marginal zones in other cities and towns. I feel we're being relentlessly driven forward by urbanization – these unfinished construction projects stand like glitches in the system, yet also like monuments to the process. My work has always sought to articulate my relationship with the society I'm embedded in. While it mostly leaves me with a sense of compression and powerlessness, it's precisely these feelings that forge the desolate atmosphere permeating all my pieces. When it comes to painterly language and style, I hope what emerges isn't from imitation or deliberate searching, but grows organically from my physical and psychological experience of this world. In the act of painting, what matters most is channeling those surging emotions and projecting one's very breath onto the canvas – like the ancient saying goes, "Only when mountains and valleys fill your chest can your brush conjure infinite vistas." Some things defy verbal expression; I can only hope viewers open their sensory channels to receive what each painting communicates in its own particular presence.

M: In your artist statement for World Island, you repeatedly mention "dependent resistance"—that paradoxical relationship where individuals are both alienated from and entangled with the social machinery. Compared to the more abstract themes of time and energy in your previous two solo exhibitions, does this signify a shift from metaphysical inquiry toward more concrete engagement with reality? Was there a defining moment that prompted this transition?

L: I remember reading an essay by Mr. Wu Guanzhong titled "A Kite Never Breaks Its String" – it discussed how artistic form and content must always maintain a connection to real life. No matter the theme, that thin thread linking to reality can never be severed. My previous series explored memory and time, while this current body of work engages more directly with perceived reality – these are simply different pathways to sense the world, each enriching my personal expressive perspectives. What I call "dependent resistance" speaks to how we all feel discontent and unwillingness toward reality – perhaps this very tension fuels my creative drive. There's an old saying: "The nation's misfortune becomes the poet's fortune." We resent the status quo, yet paradoxically rely on these very feelings about contemporary conditions to propel our creative practice forward.

M: Your compositions predominantly feature cool tones, yet certain details shimmer with metallic accents—what draws you persistently to these metallic pigments? When documenting desolation, how do you resist slipping into pure pessimism, preserving instead that glimmer of warmth?

L: The cool color palette aligns with my aesthetic temperament, while my exclusive use of metallic pigments stems from a long creative journey—I discovered these hues could capture that particular "halo of memory" I seek to express. My work consciously avoids narrative constructs. Whether pessimism or optimism, I believe they're innate qualities etched into our DNA. While friends often describe me as quite optimistic, one's fundamental nature tends to hide beneath surface appearances—perhaps this very duality reflects the complexity of human nature itself.

M: Upon entering the exhibition space, World Island-2 is presented in a screen-like format while Dual Circulation adopts a theatrical staging. Does this deliberate configuration carry metaphorical significance? What kind of bodily experience do you intend for viewers to embody when entering the conceptual realm of “World Island”?

L: The screen-like and theatrical presentations are intrinsically connected to the content of the works. When my teachers' generation painted – whether using ink wash techniques for expressive flowers, rocks, and textural strokes (cun, ca, dian, ran), or employing oil and sketching/drawing to depict figures and landscapes with mastered perspective and anatomy – the concept of "sketching from nature (or en plein air)" was essential for acquiring imagery and material. This practice has always been intertwined with our ongoing understanding of both Eastern and Western art histories: from the Chinese tradition of capturing both form and spirit since the Wei-Jin to Ming-Qing periods, to Western painting's journey from Renaissance naturalism through Impressionism to Cézanne's reconstruction of nature – all fundamentally relied on direct observation of the natural world, making working from life the primary means of gathering firsthand experience. Now, our primary way of receiving information and images comes through electronic screens of various sizes. This has fundamentally altered how we obtain visual references during creation. Our generation grew alongside the internet and smartphone proliferation – we increasingly observe the world through screens, which inevitably influences painting's content, color, and visual presentation. I often consciously incorporate the distinctive chromatic qualities of illuminated screens when handling color relationships. Moreover, the subjects in this exhibition all derive from various models I've created over the years – arranging compositions like still lifes, constructing images deliberately. Naturally, this led to emphasizing a theatrical exhibition layout when designing the installation.

M: You once described reality as waves eroding self-constructed islands, with creation emerging in the intertidal zone. This metaphor resonates with your 2021 exhibition Turbulence and its capture of temporal fragments. Would you say these three solo exhibitions form a progressive trilogy? What core inquiry binds them together?

L: Whether these three exhibitions form a trilogy wasn't something I preconceived. Yet every artist carries an inescapable core theme—one that often eludes verbal expression, existing in that realm of wordless intuition. Artistic realization sometimes occurs in a fleeting moment, akin to what Buddhism calls dharmic joy—it flashes through our perception like sudden illumination. As I once wrote: "Art happens where language fails." This belief remains unchanged.

M: Many of your architectural works contain no human figures yet seem to retain traces of human presence—does this "absent presence" hint at the collective disappearance of individuals within urbanization's march? What kind of sociological gaze are you attempting to convey through these emptied spaces?

L: Cities are built by countless individuals and exist to serve people. Though my paintings don't depict human figures directly, I believe all painting is ultimately about people and humanity. I hope the spaces I create can trigger fragments of memory in those living through our particular social moment – memories capable of bridging past, present and future before reflecting back onto our lived reality. These seemingly empty architectural scenes are in fact painted with human emotions, temperaments and imaginings. The social experiences embedded within invite viewers to project their own stories. What appears as unpeopled structures ultimately construct nothing less than the human condition itself.

L: Every individual ultimately confronts their own dissolution—what Heidegger termed "being-toward-death." Creation emerges as an instinct, a way to channel this pervasive sense of existential bewilderment. Yet life's rhythms mirror the tides: creativity naturally ebbs and flows. My fundamental principle is never to perform resistance theatrically, nor to deliberately scrape against reality through contrived gestures.