No.223: Under the Sunlight, There is no True Intimacy

On March 13, 2026, Fotografiska Shanghai and Three Shadows Xiamen Photography Art Centre jointly present the solo exhibition Under the Sunlight, There is No True Intimacy by No.223 (Lin Zhipeng), a representative figure in contemporary Chinese image-making. This exhibition, curated by Teng Qingyun and Li Zijianmarks, marks the artist's first Shanghai tour following his presentation at Three Shadows Xiamen, systematically tracing his photographic practice spanning two decades through over a hundred works, and initiating a profound dialogue on intimate experience, visual resistance, and bodily narrative.

Desire: a subversive form of everyday practice

The exhibition title, Under the Sunlight, There is No True Intimacy, stems from No.223's enduring creative philosophy – beneath the seemingly ordinary surface of daily life lies another layer of real topography constructed by the body, desire, and emotion. His lens acts as a calm yet poetic observer, wandering through urban corners, natural fragments, and private scenes, capturing those easily overlooked, flickering, and unclassifiable moments of life. In contemporary visual culture, desire has always functioned as an ambiguous force of resistance, navigating the tension between social discipline and individual liberation. This exhibition unfolds around this very notion, exploring how desire becomes a subversive form of everyday practice.

Clandestine yet powerful dialogues

With a sustained and evocative visual language, the artist records the clandestine yet powerful dialogues between body, nature, and objects, sketching an intermediate zone of fluid boundaries. Here, the distinctions between public and private, purity and taboo, nature and culture become blurred. Desire points towards the unattainable, and it is precisely the pursuit of this "impossible" that allows anxiety and exhilaration, pain and beauty, to coexist.

No.223: a creative stance

“No.223's practice has always occupied an 'intermediate state' – maintaining tension between public and private, documentation and fiction, restraint and release. His images are not answers, but questions: How do we preserve intimate freedom within a disciplined society? And how, through looking, can we reach reconciliation with others and with ourselves?”

No.223 is more than an artist's alias - it is a creative stance: a refusal to be defined by a single identity, insisting on dual expression through both image and text. In an era where social media chases instant stimulation, his work, with its subtle endurance, reawakens the viewer's perception of their own experience.