Song Dong’s monumental installation mirror memory, globalization and impermanence – huge
Mirrors, lighting and furniture gather on a huge scale on Song Dong’s luminous installation. The Chinese artist’s interdisciplinary practice often combines performance, sculpture, painting, video and calligraphy to summon memories and create a huge immersive experience.
Themes of transition and ephemerality often appear in the song’s works, such as a series of installations and performances, in which the desktop structures reminiscent of the metropolitan skyline are constructed with edible snacks, bricks removed, or biscuits of biscuit by Biscuit – as visitors. These works play and saccharin on the surface, examine the artist’s own childhood experiences of a minority of scarcity, as well as the themes of transient and globalization.
“Waste” (no waste) originally exhibited in major institutions in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Germany. Pace Gallery, who represents the artist, said the installation performance incorporated more than 10,000 items his mother had accumulated over fifty years, becoming a “physical and psychological disassembly.” The audience showed the audience “the true scenery of the merchandise, including bottle caps, shoes, blankets, toothpaste tubes, metal pots and toys”.
By using old wooden windows, bed frames, doors, mirrors, lamps, color-coated glass, porcelain, and other found objects and “daily necessities”, the song constitutes an exquisite structural device. These evoke dreamy concepts of family, belonging, security and immigration, while exploring the relationship between memory and fact, humor and trauma. He pulled out materials from the streets of Beijing and purchased discarded furniture, architectural elements and Quotidian items.
“There are remnants of people’s houses that carry the history of the city and the lives of the people,” Pace said. “When the audience is invited to peek inside, they are transformed into voyeurs: imagining their own houses, stories, perhaps identifying common experiences and doing their best to think about the future.”
Now, singing is part of the vibrant 36th São Paolo Biennale, Song’s work appears in ambitious facilities of dozens of artists around the world. His commissioned work, Borrowing Light, takes the form of a mirrored world, filled with lights that reflect from various surfaces, unlike one of Yayoi Kusama Infinite Mirror Room.
The artist considers the concept of “borrowing” based on its inherent temporality. He positioned it as a spirit to understand our short time on Earth, whether it is the cycle of life, or even the existence of human beings in the millions of evolutionary processes.
The song draws inspiration: “The mirror of the carnival and the traditional Chinese Feng Shui “Using mirrors and windows to expand the interior space by welcoming the outside world. “Borrowing light” becomes a participatory experience that reflects and illuminates the movement of visitors throughout the space.
“Using fluid elements such as light, reflections and hallucinations, Song’s installation immerses the audience in an infinite universe where our images and thoughts are entangled in silver, glowing light,” the biennial biennial said.
Explore more exhibitions and learn about the artists on the Pace Gallery website.
