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Song Dong, Same Bed Different Dreams No. 3, 2018, steel, wooden windows/doors/beds, mirror, coated glass, lights, daily necessities, porcelain, 254.5 cm × 224.5 cm × 361 cm (8' 4-3/16" × 88-3/8" × 11' 10-1/8") © Song Dong

Song Dong

Portrait of Song Dong

Photo by Yin Xiuzhen

Details:

b. 1966, Beijing, China

Song Dong is a key figure in the progression of Chinese contemporary art with a practice that encompasses performance, installation, video, sculpture, painting, and calligraphy, often combining mediums within a single work.

Song explores themes of memory, self-expression, impermanence, and the transience of human endeavors. His projects are often composed with quotidian materials and ephemera, proposing a destabilization of material hierarchies in relationship to personal and global themes.

Song was introduced to painting and calligraphy at a young age, which ultimately led him to pursue a bachelor’s degree in fine arts at Capital Normal University, Beijing (1985–89). During this period, Song studied painting and began to exhibit his work, which was featured in the First National Exhibition of Oil Painting, at the Shanghai Exhibition Centre (1987), as well as group exhibitions at The National Art Museum of China, Beijing (1988), and the Nanjing Museum, Jiangsu, China (1989). In 1992, Song was selected to participate in the Guangzhou Biennial, China, the same year as his first one-artist exhibition of paintings at the Culture Palace in Beijing.

Frying Water by Song Dong

Song Dong, Frying Water, 1992, video with sound, total running time: 1' 40" © Song Dong

While Song was pursuing his degree, he was already acutely aware of the 85 New Wave movement, which, informed by socio-political shifts in China as well as by European and American art, proposed a radical turn toward expressive and experimental innovations. During this time, Song was also exposed to the work of Robert Rauschenberg, which had a profound impact on his practice and contributed to his abandonment of painting in favor of video and performance. One of Song’s earliest performance pieces, Another Lesson: Do You Want to Play with Me? (1994), questioned the roles of educational institutions, transforming the Central Academy of Fine Arts Art Museum, Beijing into a classroom in which exam papers covered the walls and floor. With Song acting as headmaster, a group of middle-school students were instructed to read blank textbooks and participants were invited to write on surrounding blackboards. The performance was shut down within half an hour of its opening by the police, who dismissed its validity as an artwork and accused Song of inciting the public and creating a fire hazard.

Cultural Noodles by Song Dong

Song Dong, Cultural Noodles 1994, book, noodle machine, performance, dimensions variable © Song Dong

Song’s investigations of impermanence led him to create performances that he revisited in ongoing iterations, such as Water Diary (1995–), wherein the artist documented his daily activity of writing in water on stone, only to watch his written expressions evaporate. Participating in large-scale group exhibitions such as Inside Out: New Chinese Art (1998), which traveled to venues across the United States, Mexico, and Australia, Song’s success in the mid- and late 1990s positioned him as a major figure in the burgeoning contemporary art scene in Beijing, which became the setting for his reflections on the dynamism of China’s changing cultural landscape.

Breathing by Song Dong

Song Dong, Breathing, 1996, set of 2 color photographs, 59 1/16" × 88 9/16" × 7 1/2" (150 cm × 224.9 cm × 19 cm) each, 11' 2" × 7' 8 1/2" × 7 1/2" (340.4 cm × 235 cm × 19 cm) overall installed © Song Dong

Stamping Water by Song Dong

Song Dong, Stamping Water 1996, color photograph, 31 1/2" × 47 1/4" × 14 3/16" (80 cm × 120 cm × 36 cm) each, 12' 5 19/32" × 26' 3" (380 cm × 800 cm) overall installed © Song Dong

By the beginning of the following decade, Song had received his first one-artist exhibition in Europe, presenting Edible Pen Jing (Bonsai) (2000) at Gasworks International Art Studio in London. Inspired by childhood memories of food scarcity and themes of impermanence and globalization, Song used the cultural significance of food as a means to inspire dialogue and participation. He continued to use food as a medium in his later Eating the City series—installed in Beijing (2003), London (2006), Barcelona (2008), Brasília (2015), and Shanghai (2016), among other locations, which took the form of edible tabletop models of cities comprised of cookies, cake, and other sweets. These participatory performances acted as meditations on urbanism and consumption.

Eating the City by Song Dong

Song Dong, Eating the City, 2003-present, installation & performance © Song Dong

Following a similar theme of consumption and transience, Song created the site-specific sculpture Waste Not (2005) as an act of physical and psychological unpacking. Consisting of over ten thousand items accumulated by Song’s mother over a span of five decades, Waste Not presents the viewer with a veritable landscape of commodities, ranging from bottle caps, shoes, blankets, toothpaste tubes, metal pots, and toys. Waste Not was initially exhibited in 2005 at Beijing Tokyo Art Projects, and installed with the help of Song’s mother and sister. After the death of his mother in 2009, Song exhibited Waste Not at venues including The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2009); Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada (2010); Barbican Centre, London (2012); Carriageworks, Sydney (2013); and Städtische Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Germany (2015).

Waste Not by Song Dong

Song Dong, Waste Not, 2005–present, installation & performance © Song Dong

Song’s works have been included in numerous group exhibitions including the Gwangju Biennale, Korea (1995, 2002, 2006); Guangzhou Triennial, China (2002, 2022); Taipei Biennale (2002); Istanbul Biennial (2003); Bienal de São Paulo (2004); Liverpool Biennial (2010); Venice Biennale (2011, 2015); Documenta, Kassel (2012); Moscow Biennale (2007, 2013); the Triennale Bruges (2015); Kochi Biennale (2018); Chengdu Biennale (2022); Wuhan Biennale (2022). Other group exhibitions include Polit Sheer Form!: Hong Hao, Xiao Yu, Song Dong, Liu Jianhua, Leng Lin, Queens Museum, New York (2014); Scenes for a New Heritage: Contemporary Art from the Collection, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2015); Touching Area, Redtory Museum of Contemporary Art, Guangzhou, China (2015); Megacities Asia, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2016); I am you, you are too, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota (2017); Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2017); The Allure of Matter: Material Art from China, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2019–2020), which traveled to The Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago (2020) and Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts (2020–2021); Common Ground: UCCA 15th Anniversary Patrons Collection Exhibition, UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2022); A Window Suddenly Opens: 30 Years of Experimental Photography in China, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. (2022–2024); Signals: How Video Transformed the World, The Musuem of Modern Art, New York (2023), among others. Song’s performances and installations have been held in numerous locations across Asia, Europe, and the United States.

Doing Nothing Garden by Song Dong

Installation view, Documenta 13, Kassel, Germany, Jun 9 – Sep 16, 2012. Song Dong, Doing Nothing Garden, 2010–2012, video, 600 photos by Song Dong and Iacopo Seri; edited by Song Dong and Ma Qiusha; commissioned by Documenta 13; sponsored by Uli Sigg and Pace Gallery Beijing © Song Dong

Song has been the subject of over thirty monographic exhibitions including Life is Art, Art is Life, a retrospective held at The Groninger Museum, Groningen, the Netherlands (2015). Recent solo exhibitions have been held at institutions that include Städtische Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Germany (2015); A World in A Well, chi K11 Art Space, Shanghai (2016); I Don’t Know the Mandate of Heaven, Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai (2017); Eating the City, Mana Contemporary, Jersey City, New Jersey (2017); Odi, La Scène, Palais des Académies, Brussels (2018); Annealing, Shanghai Museum of Glass (2023). Song Dong Eating the City, Suzhou Museum of Contemporary Art, Suzhou Olympic Sports Center Commercial Plaza, Suzhou, China (2024); Window within Window, Hermès Maison, Shanghai (2024); Song Dong: Thirteen Houses, Song Art Museum, Beijing (2024); and Song Dong: Remnants of Thirteen Houses, Beijing Commune (2024).

Song’s work is held in numerous collections worldwide, including Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong; Auckland Art Gallery, New Zealand; FRAC des Pays de la Loire, Fonds régional d'art contemporain, Carquefou, France; Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand; Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia; UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing; Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada; and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Among his honors and awards, Song is a UNESCO-Aschberg Bursary Laureate (2000), and the recipient of the Grand Award of Gwangju Biennale, Korea (2006). He was presented with a Certificate of Honor from The Board of Supervisors of the City and County of San Francisco (2011) and the Artron Art China Awards: Artist of the Year (Video and Installation) in Beijing (2011). Song was presented with the Audience Choice Award at ARSENALE 2012 in Kiev, Ukraine (2012).

Song Dong has been represented by Pace since 2010. Major exhibitions of his work with the gallery include A Blot on the Landscape (2010); Song Dong Doing Nothing (2013); Sketch (2015); Surplus Value (2016); Usefulness of Uselessness (2017); Same Bed Different Dreams (2019); Window – Mirror (2021); and ROUND (2023).

Bicycle by Song Dong

Song Dong, Bicycle 2004, double screen video, 42 1/2 × 14 × 2 1/2" (108 cm × 35.6 cm × 6.4 cm) overall installed, total running time: 60' © Song Dong

Mandara by Song Dong

Song Dong, Mandala 001, 2014, black sesame, white sesame, white pepper, lemon powder, curry, pepper, chicken powder, cumin, fennel, bean flour, beetroot powder and other condiments, knife, 7' 2 5/8" × 7' 2 5/8" × 12 5/8" (220 cm × 220 cm × 32 cm) © Song Dong

Da Cheng Ruo Que Φ150 No. 01 by Song Dong

Song Dong, Da Cheng Ruo Que Φ150 No. 01, 2020–23, old wooden windows, mirror, mirror panel, glass, 58 7/8" × 58 1/2" × 2 15/16" (149.6 cm × 148.6 cm × 7.5 cm) © Song Dong

IGNORANCEAuthor Song Dong //5-mo Vertical Version 502x380mm//ISBN2021-2023-Crystal-Light Sky Blue-color-78930g-005-V// Song Dong Art Publishing House (2023) by Song Dong

Song Dong, IGNORANCEAuthor Song Dong //5-mo Vertical Version 502x380mm//ISBN2021-2023-Crystal-Light Sky Blue-color-78930g-005-V// Song Dong Art Publishing House (2023), 2021-2023, crystal, 19-3/4" × 23-1/4" × 9-1/16" (50.2 cm × 59 cm × 23 cm) © Song Dong