Li Songsong

Material as History

30.10.2015–06.02.2016

Artist

  • Li Songsong

Curator

  • Hendrik Bündge

Publication

A catalogue with English, Italian and German texts by Lorenzo Sassoli de Bianchi, Gianfranco Maraniello and Hendrik Bündge was published by Kerber Verlag, Bielefeld.

The Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden is pleased to announce the first institutional solo exhibition with works by Chinese painter Li Songsong in Germany. In cooperation with the Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna (MAMbo) it is the first institutional solo exhibition in Europe.

Li's artistic approach manifests itself in the medium of painting and is characterized above all by a Chinese view of the history of the 20th century. In recent years in particular, he has increasingly focused on processes of social change brought about by globalization. His starting point is political events and processes, which, divided into rectangles of different colors, are transferred into large-format paintings. The oil paint, which is applied in several layers and can be several centimetres thick, becomes the actual pictorial ground into which Li carves his motifs with brush and paint.

Li Songsong was born in 1973. After graduating from the Subsidiary School of the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing in 1992, he went on to receive his B.F.A. in oil painting from the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in 1996.

Curated by Hendrik Bündge