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| Song Dong’s Solo Exhibition |
Presented by: Shanghai Zendai Museum of Modern Art
Dates: 7 September – 5 October, 2008
Venue: Gallery 1-4, Shanghai Zendai Museum of Modern Art
(No.28, Lane 199, Fangdian Road, Shanghai, China)
Opening Reception: 5:00pm, 7 Sep. 2008
Artistic Director: Shen Qibin
Academic Director: Binghui Huangfu
Curator: Leng Lin
Project Manager: Yang Xinyu
The artist"s name, Song Dong, has been used as the title of the
exhibition. In Song"s view, art is life. He intends to share with
audience his views toward life and art through the exhibition. With
meticulous attention to details of daily life, Song tends to make his
art works smaller and more exquisite. Compared with many other artists,
Song seems quite reluctant to give explanation of his works and his
thoughts behind them. As far as he"s concerned, "too much explanation
would restrain people"s power of perception." Nevertheless, this would
not affect the increasing influence and reputation of Song Dong in the
art field.
Song Dong has been engaged in contemporary art since 1988. So far, he
has held many solo exhibitions both in China and abroad and
participated in numerous group exhibitions. In 1996, he gave his
performance Breathing at Tian"Anmen Square and Houhai Lake in Beijing.
In the next year, his video installation, Slap, was put on display at
Ruins for Arts in Berlin. In 1999, the performance video Jump was shown
at both Beijing Tian"Anmen Square and Venice. In addition, he also
participated in the Amsterdam Fest in the same year. His solo
exhibition Eating Pen Jing (Bonsai) was held in Gasworks International
Art Studio, London, in 2000. Three years later, he participated in
Alors la Chine: Chinese Contemporary Art, which was held in Center
Pompidou. Moreover, he won the Grand Award of Gwangju Biennale in
2006.
What distinguishes Song Dong from many other contemporary Chinese
artists can be concluded as follows: 1. Song is never eager to label
himself as a certain type of artist. His works cover a wide range, from
installation, performance to new media and art shows. 2. Song is not
willing to give too much explanation about his works. In his view, this
will restrain people"s power of perception. Song sticks to this point
of view even more since he has found out in recent years that the
clearer his ideas are, the harder he can explain them. Such a state is
exactly what he calls "clear vagueness". In Song"s view, an artist"s
duty is to tell the audience something vague, undefined, and can be
interpreted from multiple perspectives in a clear way.
In the entire realm of contemporary art, Song Dong"s art is personal
and quotidian. Sometimes it seems to hide in a corner, unwilling to be
discovered. Even in a large-scale opening-event work like "Edible
City," the fundamental entertainment of the "eating", its plasticity,
its eventual and inevitable disappearance-all conspire to engender a
kind of endurable distance. This distance cannot be framed in terms of
East and West or tradition and modernity. It is formed by difference
between the quotidian nature of everyday life and the exacting
requirements on contemporary life produced by this quotidianness. The
globalization of contemporary art is turning this distance into a
universally understood feeling, as the ineffable "hidden forms"
similarly become yet another mode of contemporary expression. If we say
that Song Dong"s art is hiding in a corner, then the "hiding" itself is
extremely meaningful.
In this booming era of contemporary art, art forms and attitudes toward
art have both undergone dramatic changes. It is generally considered
that the concern of Song Dong has turned from artistic forms to
approaches to art. During such transformation, personal experience of
the artist, culture and life all play significant roles. Instead of
describing Song"s art as "meant for showing", we would rather consider
it as a kind of self-accomplishment. In Song"s view, art is what"s left
rather than what"s created. In Song Dong Faces Walls Here and
Meditates, he wrote:" Long time ago, Dharma went to China from India
for the reason of Zen. Long time after that, Song Dong went to India
from China for the reason of art. Dharma couldn"t speak Chinese and he
had faced walls and meditated for ten years. What"s left on the walls
was his shadow. Song Dong couldn"t speak Hindi and he has faced walls
and meditated for ten days. What"s left on the walls is art." Song
Dong, once again, implants art that is meant to be appreciated by
"eyes" to the scene beyond sight. Ordinary, and yet very important. |
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