Weightlessness

In Li Binyuan’s work, the body is always situated within a shifting set of relations: it encounters the earth, contends with stone, and enters into both familiar and unfamiliar environments, where mutual perception and transformation unfold between the body and its surroundings. Each action becomes an attempt to relocate and recalibrate the body. Weightlessness here does not mean escaping the gravitational pull of the Earth. Rather, it describes a temporary departure from habitual experiences, established orders, and familiar ways of understanding. When the body moves beyond the support of habit and enters a state where its previous coordinates are unsettled, it begins to perceive the world differently. Over the course of nearly two decades, Li Binyuan has continually placed his body within reality, treating himself both as a method and as the subject of an ongoing experiment. His actions do not illustrate a preconceived idea; instead, they continuously search for new forms of balance within different situations. Moments that may appear dangerous, absurd, or light are not attempts to test the limits of physical endurance. Rather, between gravity and weightlessness, control and loss of control, reality and imagination, the body repeatedly measures and redefines its distance from the world. Each action becomes a form of calibration. Each work is a brief state of weightlessness. The body leaves behind its former position as it draws closer to the world. Through these newly formed relationships and experiences, it discovers another way of carrying its own weight.