Puppy Plan 2026: Found Bodies
Found Bodies is an exploration of the ‘human’, woven jointly by collectors and artists. From ancient soils of a millennium ago and archaic stone fragments to today’s canvases and screens, we have gathered shards scattered across the river of time. These fragments concern the adornment of the flesh, the flow of desire, the projection of divinity, the disorientation of the present, and the ultimate mortality that every individual must face. These fragments are mesmerising, compelling us to ask: What are the inextricable links between us and the era we inhabit?
Within the gallery, a dialogue transcending time and space unfolds with physical intensity. Ancient gold ornaments and turquoise hint at how the earliest “humans” affirmed the self through objects, while fragments of ancient statuary demonstrate the potential of being reshaped by divinity. These gazes from the past form a violent chemical reaction with Cecily Brown’s frenetic strokes of desire, Natalia G. Martin’s delicate, microscopic bodies, George Rouy’s fluid flesh, and the neon-like life forms rendered by Huang Yuxing. Pierre Huyghe’s digital work, captured in the depths of the Chilean desert, gazes at Jean-Luc Moulène’s skull—stripped of face and identity—standing together in silent resistance against the erosion of time. Around the corner, one glimpses Yu Ji’s concrete flesh, Wang Xin’s unbridled expressive lines, and Wu Shangcong’s effortless installations.
The presence of these contemporary artists constitutes the exhibition’s most vivid resonance with the present, honestly revealing the dispersed state of the body in the ‘here and now’.
Ma Hongfa and Wong Shunyu retreat into the past, attempting to reconstruct a spiritual compass amidst the ruins of mythology and astrology; Li Weiyi and Yuxuan Shao leap forward, nourishing a new void within the fissures of algorithms and illusions. Amidst this tension between the past and future, Li Liao, Yi Zhang, and Xiaochuan Wang anchor themselves to the corporeal entity, confirming biological pain through bodily orifices, sutured skins, and playful desires; meanwhile, Zoe Xu allows it all to dissolve in chemical reagents. These eight distinct paths jointly map a ‘pathological slice’ of contemporary existence—where the body is both a battlefield and the last refuge.
This exhibition offers not an answer, but a murmur. Through these various fragments and ‘samples’ of lifestyles—and within grander themes of consciousness, self, and life—we might see the active choices of the viewer refracted.
