In the exhibition The 120 Days of Sodom, Lindong Duan consistently places the focus of his painting on the hand. In his understanding, the hand and the face are both central to human emotional expression, yet they operate through different mechanisms: facial expressions are direct and outward, while the hand conveys emotion in a more concealed manner, often revealing inner states unconsciously. It is precisely this subtle and easily overlooked quality that draws Duan repeatedly back to the hand as a visual motif.
Installation view of 120 Days of Sodom, Jan. 10, 2026 - Mar. 8, 2026, Nan Ke Gallery, Shanghai, ©Courtesy of Nan Ke Gallery, Photographed by Runxin.
His paintings often extract ordinary, easily neglected moments from daily life—fleeting gestures, suspended movements, and states that hover just before expression takes shape. These fragments are fixed within the image, detached from specific narratives, retaining only the emotional density carried by posture itself. Viewing no longer leads toward narrative interpretation, but instead shifts toward an attentiveness to minute variations.
Lindong Duan
Ten-Finger Mountain，2025
Tempera on wood panel
40h x 20w cm
©Courtesy of the artist
Tempera, as his primary medium, is closely aligned with this working method. Its soft, matte surface reduces the immediacy of visual impact, keeping emotion within a restrained register. More importantly, tempera builds the image through the accumulation of lines; its slow process naturally incorporates time. In Duan’s paintings, this time is translated into visible linear traces, preserved layer by layer on the surface.
Installation view of 120 Days of Sodom, Jan. 10, 2026 - Mar. 8, 2026, Nan Ke Gallery, Shanghai, ©Courtesy of Nan Ke Gallery, Photographed by Runxin.
As a result, although the scenes appear static, they are internally composed of multiple temporal segments. Painting becomes less an outcome than a continuous process unfolding from beginning to end. For Duan, the image does not register a moment, but rather the sedimentation of time within form, allowing his work to maintain a dimension that extends beyond the static image.
Lindong Duan
Ten-Finger Mountain II，2025
Tempera on wood panel
40h x 20w cm
©Courtesy of the artist
Duan’s paintings establish a quiet yet precise counterpoint. Pictorial segments intertwine and dissolve into one another, gradually forming an encyclopedic network still in the process of becoming—one that even exceeds the artist’s own control or comprehension. Within the context of The 120 Days of Sodom, this resistance to full legibility becomes precisely the means through which classical paradigms regain vitality in the present: rules do not disappear, but as their structures tighten, they generate imaginations that are sharper, more ambiguous, and ultimately unruly.
January 21, 2026
