The Revenant: Lu Pingyuan, Song Kun, Song Ling

MadeIn Gallery proudly presents “The Revenant” featuring Lu Pingyuan’s collages and sculptures, Song Kun’s paintings along with Song Ling’s ink works on paper. Through different expressions of lived experiences of an East-Asian cultural identity in its global diaspora, the project searches for the contemporary, the digital, and the informational within the historical, the hands-on, and the imaginary, summoning the return of unknowability to our habitual and rational cognition.

Rooted in his interest in the intangibility of the human will, Lu Pingyuan (b.1984, Jinhua)’s practice has long been concentrated on his writing of “stories” as a medium of art. In “Best of the Best Draw”, Lu shares with AI the stories he writes as well as traditional mythological tales, prompting AI to generate deity figures anew, then crafted them with traditional Chinese papercutting techniques. Lu combines surreal narrative and conceptual art, creating a world view of fantasy homologous with reality to rediscover the potential for spiritual connection between us and the universe.

Lu Pingyuan is constantly exploring the gray area between belief and disbelief. Through a journey to Yinxu (The historical relics of the capital of Shang Dynasty, c. 1600 – c. 1046 BCE) and keywords derived from his imagination about an ancient and mysterious civilization, the artist created a series of masks that possess both ancient and science fiction qualities via artificial intelligence. These masks embody a universal visual experience of a worship-worthy figure, yet evoke a strong sense of alienness. The experiences of the ancient and science fiction coexist in the masks, through which Lu explores the connections between civilization, text, belief, recognition, and communication.

Linking the different series is a toad-shaped incense burner in the shape of a Wi-Fi transmitter.
The artist believes that the Internet plays an indispensable role in this ritual of imagination and generation. Like the burning of incense in sacrifices, both intangible and omnipresent. Just as modern society’s reliance on search engines is akin to divination, the attempt to seek answers from the unknown is precisely an inquiry within the known. Humanity thus observed seems no different throughout the ages. Innovation lies partly in discovering knowledge and information that has long existed and yet been overlooked.

Lu Pingyuan’s works are among the collections of White Rabbit Gallery, La Kunsthalle Mulhouse, KADIST, M Art Foundation, Singapore, Nguyen Art Foundation, Arario Museum, Ullens Art Foundation, Modern Media Group, Huaya Youth Award, The Galaxy Museum of Contemporary Art, DSL Collection, MaGMA Collection, New York Fashion Week, etc.

Song Ling (b. 1961, Hangzhou)’s watered-down ink works are distinguished by a cool, rationalist style, featuring alienated and isolated figures, animals or instruments that symbolize human beings’ overwhelming indifference and self-technicalization. The painted objects serve as specimens of “being-towards-death”, a perpetual warning of the present and future brimming with uncertainties. Combining traditional Chinese painting techniques with an interest in contemporary concerns and art movements, duality is at the heart of Song Ling’s work. Song Ling was one of the most important artists of the Chinese 85 New Wave Movement, the starting benchmark of contemporary art in China.

Sharp, brittle, out of temperature, and beautifully structured. In the “Wildlife” series, the animals or skeletons are placed in the center of the picture, the background hidden, deprived of emotion or breath. Song Ling tries to use the animals as a channel to aesthetic matters such as time and space, life and death, perishability and eternity, clarity and ambiguity.

The “Fabricated” series is a body of work by Song Ling over several years, focusing on metallic instruments. In this series, surgical tools undergo mutations, transforming into mechanical devices imbued with surrealistic imagination. Song Ling uses meticulous ink lines and shading techniques to render the metallic texture of the instruments, while also endowing these objects, nature, and technology with new forms and flowing life.

Song Ling’s works are in the collections of multiple public institutions and art museums, including the Artbank Australia, ANZ Bank, White Rabbit Gallery, the Deakin University Art Collection, Pacific Asia Museum, Long Museum, Star Museum, and the Yuz Foundation. In 2014 and 2015, Song Ling held major retrospective exhibitions, “Ghosts in the Mirror – Song Ling 1985-2013,” at Today Art Museum in Beijing and Zhejiang Art Museum. In 2023, he held a ten-year retrospective exhibition, “I’m Also Started to Have Desires,” at the HOW Art Museum in Shanghai. He currently lives and works in Hangzhou and Melbourne.

Song Kun (1977, Inner Mongolia)’s works have always embodied important concepts as “streaming narrative of consciousness” and “unconsciousness of the subconscious” fusing with Chinese oriental aesthetics. Instead of providing any fixed symbols or concepts, her practice paves an uncanny way to interpret experience related cognition and rich emotions given by life with an exclusive language intertwined with music, music video and installations. In recent years, Song Kun’s artistic creation has entered a new stage, experimentally integrating contemporary subcultures and religious elements, forming a sample that is closer to her personal temperament.

Song’s practice focuses on painting, while incorporating music live, video, installation among other media. She is hailed as one of the most promising female artists in China thanks to the honesty and emotional power in her work. Song observes and captures the different figures and fleeting moments in reality and hyper-reality world, gathering up the fragments of our ever-restructuring time. Her works constitute a mythical, private spatiality that reflects the potential changes in China.

Song Kong’s recent solo exhibitions include: “Infinity”, Song Art Museum, Beijing, China, 2024; “Pure Land·Tear of Seamaid”, Qiao Space & Perrotin, Shanghai, China, 2021; “IMBODY-Feeling Real·Nude”, SSSSART, Shanghai, China, 2019; “SUKHAVATI。o 0”, Cc Foundation & Art Center, Shanghai, China, 2018; “ASURA SUKHAVATI”, Kiyoshi Art Space, Tokyo Japan, 2017; “ASURA SUKHAVATI”, Hive Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China, 2017; “Visual Stream of Consciousness”, Minsheng Contemporary Art Museum, Shanghai, China, 2013; “A Thousand Kisses Deep”, UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China, 2012; “Seeking the Recluse but not Meeting”, Walter Maciel Gallery, Los Angeles, USA, 2009; “Xi Jia – River Lethe”, Boers-Li Gallery, Beijing, China, 2008; “Song Kun”, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, USA, 2007; “It’s My Life”, Boers-Li Gallery, Beijing, China 2006.

Her works have been collected by CAFAArt Museum, M+ Museum, Long Museum, Minsheng Art Museum, New Century Art Foundation, Start Museum, Cc Foundation & Art Center, Zhi Art Museum, TANC, START Museum, Giraud Pissarro Segalot, Pinault Collection, Uli Sigg, among others.