The China Project

127 Three Decades: The Contemporary Chinese Collection SONG Dong One of the strengths of Song Dong’s art is its ability to give ordinary acts and themes a wider resonance. Taking traditional and domestic rituals such as cooking, the stamping of wax seals and calligraphic writing, Song Dong converts them into meditative personal gestures that highlight the importance of time and memory in contemporary living. Showing an early interest in art, Beijing-born Song Dong received a traditional painting education. However, during his studies at Beijing’s Capital Normal University, he was introduced to the ’85 New Wave, through which avant-garde practices flourished across China. Song Dong developed a particular interest in conceptual art and, after graduating in 1989, conclusively rejected painting. No longer confined to the canvas, Song Dong began to explore how art communicated ideas. Of particular interest to him were ideas of transience, perception and the ephemeral nature of existence. Already interested in Taoist philosophy, Song Dong looked for ways of working that engaged with the moment of creation. As a result, many of his works incorporate performance. Considered one of the most significant proponents of Chinese conceptual art, Song Dong’s practice is a form of meditation. Because of this, the work often exists only through its documentation in photographs and videos, as is the case in Stamping the water 1996. Comprising a series of 36 photographs, Stamping the water documents a performance Song Dong undertook in the Lhasa River, Tibet, in 1996. Each image records a moment in Song Dong’s repeated action of stamping the water with an ancient wooden seal, which bore the carved inscription shui (water). The sacred river continues to flow as Song Dong’s meditative act of inscription works in harmony with the water’s natural force. In this work, Song Dong ‘recalls those innumerable small acts through which an individual attempts to construct and regulate a relationship to the world’. 1 In Walking through the mirror 2002, a split, single-screen video work, Song Dong repeatedly hits a large sheet of mirror with a heavy wooden hammer until it smashes, producing a hole through which he then walks. Created in the public park area of Southbank — during Song Dong’s visit to Brisbane as part of the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in 2002 — the mirror captures reflections of the city, which shatter and split as the mirror breaks to reveal a crowd of observers behind. The split-screen video documentation records the performance from each side of the mirror as it breaks, enhancing the sense of its doubling and reflective nature. Central to this work is the mirror’s capacity to provide another perspective, though one that is shimmering and transient in nature. This may be likened to the shadowy and physically insubstantial nature of video itself, as well as the different and often temporal perspectives visitors have of a city. Song Dong employs the split-screen mode to explore notions of perception, illusion and transience in contemporary society. endnote 1 Julie Walsh, ‘Song Dong – The diary keeper’ in APT 2002: Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art [exhibition catalogue], Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 2002, p.99. opposite Stamping the water 1996 Type C photographs, ed. 1/4 / 36 photographs: 120 x 80cm (each, irreg., approx.) / Purchased 2002. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation above Stamping the water (detail) 1996