Jiashun Zhou
b. 1999, Chinese
In the Body Lies the Truth
IOMO Gallery, Bucharest, RO
On view until 13 June at IOMO Gallery in Bucharest, In the Body Lies the Truth brings together nine international artists from a distinctively singular curatorial proposition: the body cannot lie. Curated by Thom Oosterhof and featuring works by Billy Gibney, Arthur Lemonier, Sam Lipp, Graham Silveria Martin, Alejandra Moros, Justin O’Brien, Nathan Ritterpusch, Zoe Schweiger, and Liu Xin, the exhibition stages the human form as the last uncorrupted archive in an age where screens distort, voices are scripted, and algorithms curate our very reality.
The exhibition takes as its conceptual anchor a figure deeply embedded in the local context: Constantin Brâncuși. His insistence that what is real is not the external form but the essence of things operates here not merely as curatorial citation but as working method. Brâncuși stripped sculpture to its vital core, removing everything unnecessary for recognition and, ultimately, truth. This exhibition applies that same reductive logic to the body. By removing the noise of speech, of context, of personality, what remains is essence—and that essence, it turns out, is remarkably eloquent.
Several of the works on view are deliberately cropped fragments of wider images. A section, a detail, and even still the full story is told. You don’t need the entire scene to access the emotion, the physicality, or the work’s energy. The fragment speaks with the authority of the whole. There is a further thread tying this international presentation to its Romanian setting. In local culture, the ia—a traditional blouse—adorns its wearer in memory, sacred geometry, and protection. It carries patterns and stories that have traveled generations, functioning as a vehicle for the passing of wisdom. Much like the body itself, the ia encodes identity beyond the reach of any screen, a manual for reading what cannot be spoken.
These ideas find vivid and varied expression across the exhibition. Billy Gibney, an Australian artist, presents a hyper-emotive crop of a female figure whose expression is, on the surface, somewhat neutral. And yet the work is loaded with emotion — simply through her downward gaze, through the quality of a woman who did not know anyone was looking. That unguarded quality is consistent throughout the exhibition: these are people captured in their resting state, their resting emotion, before performance sets in. The viewer is granted access to something private, something that precedes the mask.
Graham Silveria Martin, a Scottish painter now living and working in London, strikes a different register entirely. His paintings combine an extraordinary intimacy and softness in human form with the brute physicality of heavy steel frames that encase them, adding immense material weight. The contrast is striking—tender, raw, honest imagery held within something almost industrial. One work in particular is at once erotic, sensual, and profoundly soft. By showing only the cropped faces of two figures, Silveria Martin places the viewer squarely in the moment. It overflows. There is nothing performed or withheld. Their bodies are simply telling the absolute truth.
This, ultimately, is what the exhibition returns to again and again. While society demands constant, agile performance, the body refuses to comply. It remains, stubbornly and beautifully, our most honest anchor. These works look beyond the polished façades of modern life to find narratives that surface only through bodily introspection—stories that run deeper than words could ever reach.
For more information, please consult IOMO Gallery’s website here →
Last Updated on May 20, 2026
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About the author:
Julien Delagrange (b. 1994, BE) is an art historian, contemporary artist, and the director of CAI and CAI Gallery. Previously, Delagrange has worked for the Centre for Fine Arts (BOZAR) in Brussels, the Jan Vercruysse Foundation, and the Ghent University Library. His artistic practice and written art criticism are strongly intertwined, examining contemporary art in search of new perspectives in the art world.
