Song Yuanyuan: Clues

The Lodge”and “Shadow and Perspective”, which may be a relatively familiar structure of Song Yuanyuan’s painting, are repeatedly refracted, moving from the symbolic to the realistic – or rather, it presents the outreach of black hole, the opposite of infinity, whose internal lines no longer belong to a sphere but to a flexible surface, thus entering another kind of perspective imagination. These paintings are more about painting or photography than significant symbols of the times. The elements are more characterized: the intermittent fairy tale narrative, the juxtaposition effect of the backwards reversal, the secondary destruction of the profile or graffiti scene, all carried in a most direct way. This kind of imagination and inquiry is within the series of works “Clues.

In Song Yuanyuan’s new paintings, in the chaotic collage, the ferocious deconstruction, and the riot of objects, is it possible to read the genetic picture of “grief”, or to abbreviate it, in a kind of inversion and redrawing of solemnity? At least a melancholic gaze can be perceived.

Song Yuanyuan was born in Shenyang, China in 1981. Graduated from the Department of Photography, Luxun Academy of Fine Arts in 2005. Drawing inspiration from images, photos, and pictures, his works embody the desire and lure for reality and illusion and the contradictions, which the juxtaposition of these two might create. Song’s artistic language is based on his perceptions and feelings when confronted with everyday spaces, common and often grotesque environments, miserable places where all that has been left behind are marks of human presence. Abandoning traditional narrativity in his paintings with a diminishing attempt in portraying a three dimensional space, Song tried to depict a sense of emotion through collaging objects. He strives to employ the fragmentary expression of modern poetry and transform the words into images, offering an anomalous aesthetic with a violent approach to the representation. Recent solo and group exhibition include: “Carefree Days”, Platform China, Beijing, China (2022); “Tangle of Revolution and Political Soul”, SGA, Shanghai, China (2021); “On Behalf of”, Qiao Space, Shanghai, China (2021); “Farm”, Chi K11 Art Space, Shenyang, China (2020); “Poetry of Rebels”, Vanguard Gallery, Shanghai, China (2019); “Downstage, Upstaged”, Platform China Contemporary Art Institute, Beijing, China (2016).