Li Songsong Biography

Li Songsong’s vivid high relief paintings are composed of imposing brushstrokes and grids of color. Often dealing with political or historical imagery but not limited to, his paintings are based on found photographs. Assuming any image is imbued with its own ideology and associations, Li intentionally destroys the image he chooses and rebuilds it when constructing his painting. It still retains some of its past, but there’s a distance between the painting and the image it is based on. Once these images are taken out of their original context, the figures become refreshing abstractions and emotive marks through Li’s handling and manipulation of the materials. The method employed by Li Songsong is unique in his dismembering and reassembling of the pictorial scene into a coherent portrait. By remaining deeply attentive to the act of painting and reworking the multiple layers of paint, Li’s paintings neutralize and efface the potential implications of the figures as the historical scene recedes. Although Li holds a certain fascination with the environment that he grew up around, he continues to paint with an objective attitude.

Li Songsong has been the subject of numerous museum retrospectives that have traveled internationally, including those organized by Groningen Museum, Groningen, The Netherlands (2008); The University of California, Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley (2007); Museum der Moderne, Salzburg (2007), Austria; Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany (2006). The artist also participated in Through the Painting (2007), a special project for the 2007 Moscow Biennale. Li Songsong received Honorable Mention at the 4th China Contemporary Art Awards in 2004