Kwai Fung Hin Art Gallery is delighted to announce worldwide exclusive representation of China-based artist Xue Song. Known for his unique artistic language – making collages from burnt fragments of printed texts and images, the artist is considered one of the most important artists of the Chinese ‘Pop Art’ movement. Xue Song’s latest works have been presented at his solo exhibition In Search of Dao – the Latest Works of Xue Song from September to November 2022 at Kwai Fung Hin Art Gallery, and through the gallery’s booth at the inaugural edition of Art SG. His works will appear constantly in Kwai Fung Hin’s art fair participations, including the upcoming Art Basel Hong Kong (March 2023).
About the Artist
Xue Song was born in Anhui, China in 1965, and graduated in 1988 from the Shanghai Theatre Academy's Department of Stage Design. One of the pioneers of the Chinese Pop Art movement, his work is also representative of the ‘New Shanghai School’.
Xue Song grew up in an era of dramatic changes during China’s reform and opening up, with rapid social modernisation, economic transformation, the rise of materialism, and a modern art movement that challenged traditional aesthetics. Living amidst the chaos of Shanghai, Xue Song shared the cultural outlook of the generation born in the 1960s: a profound, reflective approach to history combined with a strong sensitivity to contemporary changes. In exploring social facades and pursuing his unique style of art, he and his fellow artists contributed to the development of Chinese contemporary art.
Xue Song's initial artistic experiments began in the 1980s, a time when China was rapidly transforming and opening up to the outside world, followed by a full swing pursuit for modernization in art creation. Ideas that challenged traditional aesthetics, such as Pop Art, inspired many Chinese artists. Influenced by the early collage works of Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008), Xue Song began to experiment with collage in his graduation year, and his early works were predominantly executed in abstract and expressionist styles.
Up to 2022, Xue Song's creations may be divided into six themes: ‘Cultural Pop’, ‘New Landscapes’, ‘Dialogue between the East and West’, ‘Text and Calligraphy’, ‘Metropolis’ and ‘The Dao from Nature’ series.
Artistic Style
A studio fire accident in 1991 was the turning point for Xue Song's artistic career. Fire and collage consequently became his trademark techniques, with flames and ashes used to transform disparate printed fragments into images that address wider issues, such as society, politics, tradition, humanities, fashion and aesthetics. The paradox between the microscopic and the macroscopic, as well as the tension between form and content, creates a dramatic vacillation between alienation and metamorphosis in Xue Song's paintings.
His works simultaneously deconstruct and reconstruct the essence of painting itself. After deconstruction and reconstruction, various images became either mutually reinforced or endowed with new meanings through their dissonance, thereby reflecting the artist’s perspectives on or metaphors relating to issues such as the East and West, historical memory and reality, traditional culture and contemporary viewpoints, as well as globalisation and individualism.
In recent years, Xue Song took inspirations from the ancient Chinese philosophy and his own life experience to create the latest ‘The Dao from Nature’ series, which demonstrated a breakthrough in his creative process from narrative imagery to abstract forms of expression.
‘Kwai Fung Hin Art Gallery has held three solo exhibitions for Xue Song in 2008, 2014 and 2022 respectively, and Kwai Fung Art Publishing House published the artist monograph in 2011. Throughout the nearly 15-year collaboration, we witnessed the artist's growth and breakthroughs, and established deep mutual trust and strong partnership’
Ms. Catherine Kwai, Founder & CEO of Kwai Fung Hin Art Gallery commented,
‘As a pioneer of contemporary Chinese Pop Art and representative of the ‘New Shanghai School’, we respect very much Xue Song's contribution to the development of contemporary Chinese art, and are pleased to take up the responsibility of representing and promoting his works worldwide exclusively.’
Important Exhibitions and Notable Collections
Exhibitions
2022 Transfiguration, Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, China
2020 China DNA, Powerlong Museum Shanghai, China
2019 Xue Song: Phoenix Art from the Ashes, Long Museum, Shanghai, China
2014 Gene Mapping – Works of Xue Song 1995-2014, Kwai Fung Hin Art Gallery, Hong Kong, China
2013 The Fragment Time, Xi'an Art Museum, Xi'an, China
2011 Xue Song: Piercing Through History and the Fashion, A Retrospective from 1988-2011, Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai, China
2010 A Fashion, Or the History?, The Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo, Japan
2008 Xue Song: A Tale of Modern Time, Kwai Fung Hin Art Gallery, Hong Kong, China
Collections
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, United States
Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris, France
Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, China
Kunst Museum Bonn, Germany
Long Museum, Shanghai, China
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, United States
M+ Museum, Hong Kong, China
National Art Museum of China, Beijing, China
Powerlong Museum, Shanghai, China
Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai, China
The Guy & Myriam Ullens Foundation, Switzerland
Uli Sigg Collection, Switzerland
Xi'an Museum, Xi'an, China
