LI DONGLU

In Li Donglu’s paintings, the pictorial space has always been imbued with a solemn and silent atmosphere, without ever revealing the human figure. The works presented in this exhibition extend his exploration of the notion of “ruin,” while introducing, for the first time within this series, the torso and the human form.

Yet the forms that emerge are neither complete bodies, nor defined objects, nor subjects carrying a specific narrative. Through the concept of “Formless,” the body is stripped of all identity and fixed contours. It merges with mineral matter, penetrates the rock and, in turn, allows itself to be shaped by it. The figures seem at times to emerge slowly from ancient geological and mineral strata, as though awakening, and at others to dissolve gradually, returning to the stone itself.

They could be traces left behind by a vanished civilisation, or signs of a gestation still unfinished at the heart of geological evolution. Perhaps they belong to a past whose memory we have lost, or to a future that has yet to come.

“Ruin” therefore signifies neither destruction nor an end, but an intermediate state in perpetual transformation. Erosion, fragmentation, mineral deposits and the silent proliferation of life become forces through which time shapes forms. The textures of the human body and the strata of the earth overlap, placing the elements of the painting within a shared process of formation, shaped by nature, time and human action alike.

In this space, freed from linear temporality and fixed causality, the works no longer tell a closed story. Instead, they open onto a suspended space situated between nature, civilisation and the strata of time.

“The Formless” is not nothingness, but an infinite possibility of becoming, born from a refusal to be fixed or defined. It is a form in the process of becoming, an emergence that remains unfinished. Each viewer is thus invited to enter this space with their own experience and, through the time devoted to the work, to resonate with these forms in a movement of echoes, transformations and flows.