2012
Oil on canvas
65 x 45 cm
Courtesy of Artist
Song Kun (b. 1977, Beijing), one of China’s most prominent young female artists, paints with a kind of wistful desire, as the figures portrayed in her works seem to hover in a dream world both familiar and fantastic. In “A Thousand Kisses Deep”, Song Kun’s works are shimmering, technical studies of drifting light and explore a sinister, sensual beauty. Human forms and jellyfish tendrils slowly glimmer, as a sense of silence pervades the shadowy rooms and ocean depths. Arrayed across the twin walls of UCCA’s Nave, one group of paintings explores the quiet properties of natural materials, while another ventures into the realm of carnality. An immersive video installation situated at the end of the exhibition and a multimedia performance on the opening day, June 2, expand the exhibition’s scope. In this exhibition, Song Kun distances herself from earlier, narrative-driven work and enters a reserved, wavering reality.
For more information, please read the “Song Kun: A Thousand Kisses Deep” press release.
“Song Kun’s work is so cool, and the exhibition set up is amazing!”.
The Current cycle of paintings, A Thousand Kisses Deep, shows how far her explorations have taken her in the intervening years of work, bearing the marks of extended deliberation. The marks of extended deliberation. The subject matter unfolds coherently but not exactly predictably: Inner Mongolian punks, cyborg girls, and jellyfish all make appearances, split along either side of an imagined line between spirituality and carnality that dissects the central Nave of the exhibition space, and that finds separation between the front and back of this fold-out book. If Song Kun's earlier work was about capturing situations, this cycle attempts instead to poeticize a state of mind。