Tuesday to Friday 12:00-20:00 (Last admission: 19:30)
Saturday and Sunday 12:00-21:00 (Last admission: 20:30)
Closed on Mondays
The Train Garden is open to the public every day
111 Ruining Road, Xuhui District, Shanghai
021-33632872
info@startmuseum.com
SSSSTART is going to hold Song Kun’s solo exhibition “IMBODY-Feeling Real· Nude” from September 20th, 2019 to November 10th, 2019. During this exhibition, Song will exhibit her work done in the latest two years. The idea as Song treated “Body” as an object was connected with her own definition of portraiture. In the ancient Chinese language, the definition of “portrait” was a painting of a person’s appearance and character. In the modern Chinese language, the word “portraiture” came from Japanese, it is defined as the photograph of a person. In the contemporary discourse, “portraiture” means artistic photographs with a certain style. Song combined the three definitions and developed into her own understanding of “portraiture”. “IMBODY” is the transformation of the English word “embody” which means to represent in bodily form. However, “IMBODY” can be also seeing as “I’m Body”, and understanding as “body is noumenon” in which body is a carrier of living experience, self-recognition, and the multi-projection of identity.
The idea of “IMBODY” came from the residency program as she stayed in a women’s prison in Berlin for 40 days. Based on living experience there and some of the prisoners’ memoirs, Song developed her thinking about order, imprisonment, rational control and their modification of the natural qualities of human beings. “The subculture of female prisoner can be exploited in many things such as SM, sex appeal of imprisonment, etc. In which, control and revolt, sensibility and rationality, mercy and no mercy, freedom and order, love and hate, all these extremely opposite stuffs can be broken down into some aesthetic and imaginative parts which allows us to experience the possibility of freedom.” (Song Kun, VICE Creators Project interview)
Song Kun finished her master’s degree at the 3rd studio, Oil Painting Department of Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in 2006. Most of her works are paintings, but also include some multi-media works with music, live performance, music video as well as installations. A significant concept conceived in Song’s work is the “stream-of-consciousness narrative” and “subconscious synaesthesia”. This iconic feature also inherits the Chinese traditional aesthetics. She doesn’t attempt to offer any fixed symbols or concepts but is willing to provide an independent sample within China in terms of the topic “how to sense the acknowledgment of life experience and the abundant emotions” at the present stage. “Her firmness and confidence enable her paintings to combine other languages such as music, sounds or video. This creates a unique narrative in her work. In recent years, Song’s art steps to a new stage. Her experiment of integrating contemporary subculture and religious elements makes her works highly match her qualities.
