Li Songsong Turns History into Painting

One of the most celebrated contemporary painters in China, Li Songsong has honed his distinct style—marked by his use of reliefs, bold brushstrokes, and solid color blocks—over the last 20 years as part of his pursuit “to paint something that had a certain distance from reality,” as he once put it.

This film—narrated by Pace’s Curatorial Director Xin Wang—brings you inside Li's Beijing studio on the occasion of his 2025 exhibition History Painting at our New York gallery. On view from November 7 to December 20, the show features new paintings that speak to Li’s enduring engagement with history as both inspiration and substance for his work. “Even as he withdraws from legible references to history,” Wang says of Li’s latest works, “he conjures the sensation of being enmeshed in its brutal embrace.”

History Painting is accompanied by an exhibition booklet from Pace Publishing featuring an essay by Wang.