ZHOU SONG

The artist Zhou Song’s painting does not appear through linear narrative, nor does it depict the landscape of conventional experiences. Rather, it emerges through the lens of ‘post-humanism’—a multi-layer ecosystem formed by consciousness, media, physical properties, and cosmic scope. Facing the current situation where technic advancement, eco-crisis, and cognitive boundaries continue to re-construct themselves, the human condition is situated on a layer of thin ice that consistently witnesses ruptures, holding a strong sense of instability but continues to form new sensibilities and modes of existence. From his first solo exhibition in Today Art Museum in 2009 to his recent appearances in places such as Osthaus Museum Hagen, Shanghai Powerlong Museum, and Venice Biennale Parallel Exhibition, his work continuously holds a philosophical speculation around the complex relationship between life and cosmos, technology and civilisation. His creative narrative can be held as a visual narration of the ‘discourse around post-humanistic existence’, including not only a delicate inheritance of classical oil painting techniques but more so a sensitive catch of contemporary existential experiences and a futuristic imagination.

The title Walking on Thin Ice originates from Zhou Song’s homonymous work. In his pictorial space, a pair of giant pants suspends itself above the cold and fragile ice surface, the human subjects are situated in this abnormal ‘fictional world’, delineating an unstable apocalyptic landscape. Along with their enjoyment of taking control of technology, the human species has to face the deep anxiety brought by nature’s retaliation and the collapse of meaningfulness. The uncanniness brought by this anxiety and surreality is apparent in Enigmatic Realm, a work that measures eight meters in length: the naturalistic tree entangles itself with the artificial pencil, presenting a cosmic ecosystem of multi-layered life apparatuses. Lying under the thin ice is the undetectable ‘black hole’. The black hole under Zhou’s narrative often appears with entanglements and fragments, in Gravity, Black Hole and Black Hole, it is as if the human and objects are entangled in a continuous falling, penetration, and disintegration, intimately connecting with each other by artificial objects amid the collapsing boundaries.

Another core aspect of Zhou Song’s practice lies in ‘the visualisation of power’. Whether in Civilisation, where structures are bent and layered, or in the installation Advancing, which constructs a walking gait that appears casual yet is in fact rigorous and conceptually charged, his works consistently investigate how images can render the materialisation of energy visible. Even in small-scaled works such as The Palm’s Tale, The Knot, and The Gun, there is also the presentation of a disintegrated agency, objects that are detectable in human experiences such as hand, knot, and specific objects all transform into containers where energy folds itself and objects go through the process of metamorphosis. In the meantime, Zhou advances his contemplation of the concept of ‘nature’. In his ‘Supernatural’ series, he is not depicting a primitive nature that appears in a lyrical form but rather a compositional landscape as a result of technical interference, reconstruction, and even fabrication. An Escape to the Moon no longer centers around macroscopic historic narration, the nature in Post-Nature and New Nature are also no longer the background or object, but a ‘post-life’ apparatus as a result of the crossbreeding between technical and cultural genes.

In the meanwhile, Zhou is not narrating a pessimistic apocalyptic view only. While unveiling the predicaments, he also keeps a delicate hope and an exploration of inner order using the fragility and uncertainty of candle in works such as Divine Light and Candlelight. Such effort to seek balance is itself the most active response to the condition of ‘walking on thin ice’, it is for a more delicate and clear-minded progression. Aesthetically speaking, he blends into his work both the bizarre imagination of surrealism and the delicate texture of figurative painting, connecting intellectually the meditation of human-nature relationship in oriental philosophy and the criticism against technical life in western post-humanistic theory. For instance, the work series of ‘Oil Painting Manuscript’ can be held as a record of the artist’s thought experiments, pondering over and over again motifs such as ‘candlelight’, ‘super nature’, and ‘pencil’.

In the face of the giant power of cosmic structure, the human species is always situated on a layer of thin ice. But it is exactly on this thin layer that we obtain the possibilities of new senses and ways of existence. In Zhou’s cosmic landscape, figure is not a visual form but a concretisation of power. Thin ice does not represent danger but the real foundation upon which the modern human species lives. It is a world formed by uncertainty, power, energy, fissions, and latent creativity. It is not only a courage to walk within this world, but also a new cosmic gaze.

Sherry Wang | Tang Contemporary Art