Coinciding with Gallery Weekend Beijing, Bodyscape brings together the works by artists working with and represented by Lisson and ZIAN Gallery, including Marina Abramović, Ding Hongdan, Oliver Lee Jackson, Laure Prouvost, Nicola Samorì, Wang Xingyun and Zhao Gang, in an exploration of how the body is constructed, imaged, and experienced across contemporary artistic practices. Presented by SIMPLE ONE, the exhibition approaches the body not as a fixed or unified subject, but as a shifting field, one that is simultaneously physical, psychological, and representational.

Bodyscape traces processes of becoming, where the body appears as something constructed through image-making and performative acts, shaped by memory, perception, and material intervention. In this expanded field, the body is no longer simply depicted—it is staged, mediated, and reimagined as a dynamic landscape in flux.

PORTRAIT WITH FLOWER Closed Eyes (2009) highlights Marina Abramović’s long-standing interest in the relationship between the artist’s body, their physical experience, and their psychological state during performance. In this photograph, the artist is depicted holding a single flower with her eyes closed, creating a powerful juxtaposition between the fragility of the flower and the intensity of her silence. The stillness of her pose contrasts with the energetic nature of many of her performance works, offering a meditative moment within her broader body of art.

Ding Hongdan draws materials from personal memory and popular culture. By systematically deconstructing and reimagining found imagery, she juxtaposes reality with the fantastic, cultivating a visual sensibility that is both incisive and wry. In Carpe Diem 2 (2026),  the central figure is bathed in the stark halo of a spotlight—an effect that simultaneously accentuates her presence and isolates her from the surrounding void. She is captured in a state of exhilaration; the physical tension in her face and limbs is stretched to a dramatic limit, radiating outward. This unleashed passion pierces the physical boundary of the skin, transforming the body into a site of emotional flux and heightened self-perception. Here, the body ceases to be a passive object of the spectator’s gaze; instead, it becomes a vibrant stage upon which the self is radically performed.

Oliver Lee Jackson's artistic signature lies in constructing intricate, stratified compositions where figurative forms, often termed ‘paint people’, emerge within dynamic fields of paint. Though based in figuration, his works are not narrative, but instead they hold the possibility for a profound experience in looking. His paintings use the figure as an entry point, from a simple line drawing of a crouched form to serpentine renderings of the human body, executed in materials ranging from chalk and oil paint to spray-painted stencils.​ Through layered forms and visual gestures, his evocative paintings lead viewers through complex compositions that gradually reveal figural elements and connective passages, creating a world within each work. 

The octopus recurs throughout Laure Prouvost’s practice as a figure that blurs perception and thought. With most of its nervous system in its tentacles, the octopus intertwines touch and cognition—much as the narrative in her work extends outward, entangling personal and collective experience. It also symbolizes the vessel of life, evoking motherhood and vitality. The female octopus refuses to eat after laying eggs, dying before they hatch, embedding a sense of generative sacrifice within the work. The Octopus Body - Oui Were In A Spiral D’Ame Our (2023) depicts an octopus and a human infant in the act of breastfeeding. Rendered in soft tones of powder blue, gray, and flesh, the work creates an environment that emphasizes warmth, touch, and affection, evoking the tender, nurturing state of early life.


Nicola Samorì approaches the body through the re-appropriation of classical imagery, treating the painted image itself as flesh to be incised, flayed, and reconfigured. In Flower Machine (2026), a soft, restrained light maintains the formal vestiges of Baroque visual order, yet the image has already begun to implode. Layers of pigment are torn, compressed, or folded outward like epidermis, exposing the raw material architecture beneath. This process forces the work to oscillate between deliberate construction and entropic disintegration; the flower ceases to be a biological specimen and becomes a "machine" spiraling out of control. In his portraiture series, Samorì moves beyond the pursuit of pictorial wholeness. He allows fractured margins and wounded surfaces to cultivate a vulnerable, tactile presence. By laying bare the material scars of the medium itself, Samorì unsettles the idealized body, revealing it to be a profoundly unstable visual construction.

Wang Xingyun’s practice is a sustained investigation into the direct imprint of tactile engagement upon paper. Through the rhythmic layering of pigment and pulp, the physical force and movement of the artist’s body are translated into tangible pictorial structures, manifesting as a complex topography of creases and fissures. In Golden Hours (2025), the undulations of the paper pulp evoke the delicate grain of skin or the ancient geological textures frozen within a cross-section of strata. At the composition’s heart, a concentration of warm amber tones undulates like heat waves shimmering over a vast sea of sand; horizontal striations rise and fall through this golden haze, resembling the silent, tangled root systems exposed on a desiccated riverbed. By repeatedly kneading and reshaping the medium, Wang imbues the paper with a resilience that transcends its inherent fragility. This process echoes Nicholas Mirzoeff’s concept of the "bodyscape": here, the body is not a static, pre-existing image awaiting representation, but a trace sedimented through continuous pressure and endurance. It remains embedded within the very fissures of the matter—caught in a state of perpetual becoming, neither fully realized nor entirely vanished.

Zhao Gang delves into the fluidity of individual identities, the clash of cultures, and the intricate interplay of fragmented historical events. His works are deeply rooted in a rich and nuanced cultural heritage, drawing inspiration from both classical and contemporary, Western and Chinese influences. Within his work, patterns and concepts gracefully unfurl, expertly deconstructing visual narratives. Wittgenstein and Russell in Hudson (2025) reflects Zhao Gang’s approach of situating philosophical questions within landscape imagery, much like his integration of historical dimensions into painting: not to recreate a scene, but to generate new paths of understanding through a deliberate spatial ‘displacement.’ The scene also mirrors Zhao’s own experience—navigating between different cultural languages, symbolic systems, and epistemologies without fully belonging to any one of them.