The term "World Island," imbued with a sense of solitude and desolation, was coined by Mackinder in 1904 in The Geographical Pivot of History. I no longer remember when it first entered my memory, alongside other grandiose concepts like geopolitical games, currency flows, and economic rise and fall. Now, dredging it up as the title of this exhibition is not to employ it within its original context, but rather to let my misinterpretation cast a projection of imagination in my mind. I break "World-Island" into two simple parts: "World" resembles the vast, turbulent reality we inhabit—mottled, brutal, and endlessly complex; while "Island" is a fragment of geography, but even more so a mirror of our inner selves—enclosed yet abundant, solitary and isolated.

Over the past few years, I’ve traveled frequently to small towns and rural areas in China’s second- and third-tier cities, where I encountered numerous abandoned and unfinished residential buildings, like isolated islands left behind by the tide of urbanization. Their relationship with the external environment mirrors my own connection, as an individual, to the machinery of society. I’ve made them the protagonists of my paintings, hoping to capture the lingering aura of their existence. In the process of painting, I strive to infuse them with surging emotions, projecting my own breath and the sensation of being crushed by reality, hoping they emit a faint glow—one that reflects both resignation and warmth.

The waves shaped by reality crash daily against the intertidal zone of our self-constructed islands, and this ebb and flow becomes the fertile ground for creative impulse. Here, we instinctively wage a dependent resistance. Yet every morning, the moment we open our eyes, reality rushes in only to swiftly turn into memory and history. Each time we fall asleep, it roars away, plunging into recollection, leaving behind nothing but a sigh and a gaze into the void.