Don Gallery is thrilled to celebrate the inauguration of its new gallery space in West Bund with the artist LU Song’s first solo exhibition “Control Point” in the gallery on 18 March 2017. The title of the exhibition first suggests the artist’s long-established working method for his painting practice – set up a “False Plan” before creating a piece, then adjust the Plan according to the progress and finally formulate a complete logic of working, which means to develop the creative trajectory of the artist’s practice via a continuous flow of control points. Nevertheless, the indispensable plans wouldn’t often point to the final results of the images.
The works on show this time all come from the artist’s recent painting practice. By a deliberation separation and layering of colors, the artist dissolves the necessary boundaries between diverse situations, rendering a dramatic alienation effect. Shattered silhouettes of figures are entangled with wildly growing giant plants. It is hard to distinguish whether the artist is intuitively responding to the living environment where he inhabits or intentionally leading the audience to escape from the overwhelming mundane routines. Such a subject made up by the artist embraces a complex mode of ambiguity. The intricate ambience diffusing the canvases is both appealing and daunting. Moments of intimacy and distance are the episodes extracted from the conscious where the ideal of living might not exist.
The artist has an experimental attitude towards painting. Body led by emotion, mind led by brushstroke, the artist prefers a method that examines the range of his psychological space. Signs of rub and wear bore by the images are not necessarily derived from the artist’s macro theory of “Control Point”, yet still characterized with some intentions. The artist is enthusiastic about adding his own literary sensibilities and montage-like textures in his painting, reflecting the perception of light in the massive coloration of great somberness, embodied with the confrontation against narrative and the obsession with autobiographical memory.
OCAT Xi’an is concurrently hosting the artist’s solo exhibition “Flow” (4 March 2017 – 28 May 2017).
LU Song received M.A. in painting from Wimbledon College of Art, University of London in 2006. He returned to China in the following year, currently working and living in Beijing. His recent solo exhibitions include “The Drunken Beggar on Horseback” (Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest, Romania, 2015), “Hinterland” (Galerie Huit, Hong Kong, 2015), “Hills Beyond the Backdrop” (Alexandre Ochs Galleries, Berlin, 2014), “To the River till Sunrise” (Dominik Mersch Gallery, Waterloo/Sydney, Australia, 2013), “To One Who Has Been Long in City Pent” (Alexandre Ochs Galleries, Berlin, 2012), “Dawn Villa” (Alexander Ochs Galleries, Beijing, 2011) and “Tiny People in Curious Pursuits” (Hub @ Alexander Ochs Galleries, Beijing, 2010). He has also participated in numerous group exhibitions such as “Painting as Strait Gate: Post-80s Artists Invitation Exhibition” (Hive Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, 2016), “Magic Hour” (Galerie Huit, Hong Kong, 2016) and “In Memory of a Landscape 2” (James Cohen Gallery, Shanghai, 2015), amongst others.
