Artist Profiles

Song Dong

(born 1966, Bejing, China) Song Dong has been a significant figure in the development of Chinese conceptual art since the early 1990s. His early work is characteristic of what the art critic Gao Minglu describes as “apartment art'” - a practice that has emerged from an environment of limited resources and little recognition by commercial and official galleries. Song Dong’s work incorporates performance, photography, projection, video and installation. Emerging from a strong Beijing-based avant-garde performance art community, Song Dong explores notions of perception and the ephemeral nature of existence. His political and financial circumstances have encouraged a solitary, meditative way of working in way that ideas are expressed through inexpensive materials and small-scale works. In his photographic series and short video pieces, Song Dong uses sequenced images to explore a rapidly modernizing China and to capture notions of transience and illusion in contemp! orary society. Whatever topic Song approaches, his critique always manages to walk the thin line between the politic and the poetic. His strength lies in a capacity to summon or convene opposites. As he has stated, "I am interested in how the two sides of the East/West contradiction become one."

Other Works By This Artist [ click to view larger images ]