Song Dong, ROUND (Installation View), via Art Observed
On view this summer at Pace Song Dong’s ROUND focuses on the artist’s practice over the past three years, placing ancient Chinese philosophy in a contemporary context and offering new understandings of ideas that figure prominently in his work. Song, who is one of the most important figures of the Conceptual art movement in China, blurs the boundaries between art and life in his interdisciplinary practice spanning painting, sculpture, performance, installation, and film. Here, the artist uses the circle as a mode of philosophical and graphical meditation, reflecting on culture, memory and time through a range of forms.Â
Song Dong, ROUND (Installation View), via Art Observed
Song specializes in borrowing familiar, everyday objects and images as part of his artistic explorations. His open and highly speculative approach to art making lends his work a distinctive lightness that has earned him international attention and acclaim. In his new series Da Cheng Ruo Que, which translates to “the highest perfection is like imperfection,” small-scale window frames are assembled into sculptures that forge nearly perfect circles, while still retaining zigzag notches at their edges. Reusing leftover waste from precious works, the show meditates on concepts of urban renewal and time.
Song Dong, ROUND (Installation View), via Art Observed
In Pace’s gallery space, this series of circular sculptures of various sizes will be scattered on the walls like clusters of stars in the universe or cells in a microscopic view. The windows in these sculptures do not provide access to the outside world, but rather reflect the scenes before them, leaving illusionistic impressions on their colorful stained- glass surfaces. The title of the work alludes to Eastern philosophical speculation: what people perceive as perfection may be imperfect, while this seemingly deficient state can lead to more possibilities and a greater sense of completeness, which is the message the artist decided to share with his daughter. Continuing its focus on the circle, the exhibition will also feature the light installation series Zou Ma Deng (Spinning Lanterns) and the sculptural work Thousand Hands, both of which were created in the past year. The artist created his first iteration of Zou Ma Deng during a four-month residency in London in 2000, using traditional moving-image techniques to represent his relationship with the environment and his imprint on urban spaces. In this latest work, Song’s bodily presence is erased, leaving the viewer with only the world around the artist as seen and documented from his own perspective over the last three years.
Song Dong, ROUND (Installation View), via Art Observed
Throughout, time and memory, space and form seem to move in and out of complex relationships, underscoring the artist’s work in all of its intricacy.
The show closes August 18th.
– D. Creahan
Read more:
Pace Gallery [Exhibition Site]
