de Sarthe Gallery Beijing is pleased to introduce photographer Lin Zhipeng a.k.a 223 for his first solo exhibition in Beijing. Lin Zhipeng is one of the most important members who has risen to prominence from social media.

Though very intimate, 223’s photographs act as a collective not-so-private diary of a young generation that wants to escape the pressures from society and plays with its limits. Lin Zhipeng’s pictures are never dramatic nor glaucous, sometimes punk and trash, sometimes very poetic. They carry a soft carelessness, a playful innocence, a certain optimism in an hedonist life going against the expected pleasures of the middle class dream.

Patterns superimposed over the blandness of skin, cinematic and poetic atmospheres where lovers stop time, unexpected fruits and wild urban animals,... Lin Zhipeng's vocabulary while in the vein of Tillmans, Clark, and McGinley remains a unique voice only to himself. Growing up in China and experiencing first hand the switch in self identification within his generation. Witnessing that the youth of the east has caught up to that of the west marking a definitive moment bridging the two cultures.

Lin Zhipeng was born in Guangdong province, China and graduated from the Guangdong University of Foreign Studies with a major in finance. Lin is a photographer and freelance writer based in Beijing. He has created a blog titled North Latitude 23 where he posts his personal photographs and words, which has millions of views.

He has contributed to numerous creative and fashion magazines as editor and writer and has produced photo shoots for magazines such as Vice, S magazine, VISION, iLOOK, City Pictorial, among others, as well as for brands such as United Nude, Converse, Nike, Glaceau Vitamin Water, Bacardi, to name a few. Since 2005 he has started a self-publishing project. So far he has included three volumes of photography (My Private Broadway), two volumes of personal zines (VERSATILE), and an independent creative magazine project (TOO Magazine). His photography works were included in 3030: New Photography In China, Elephant, Back to Black & White, Tell Mum Everything Is Ok, etc.