"In the Body Lies the Truth" featured in Contemporary Art Issue

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.

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.

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