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String, Solo Exhibition of Song Jianshu’s New Works

CIGE (China International Gallery Exposition) 2014 Artist Nomination Art Project

China National Convention Center

10/09/2014 - 10/13/2014

CIGE interview

Q: Hello Song Jianshu, nice to meet you. Our team is working on the nomination exhibition for young artists at CIGE. We have a few questions about the nomination exhibition in order to better prepare for the exhibition and collect exhibition materials.

Hello, I'm happy to be interviewed by CIGE.

Q: Can you analyze why you were recommended by Professor Sui Jianguo?

I think Professor Sui Jianguo's recommendation this time comes first from our long-standing relationship as teacher and student. He knows very well my strengths and weaknesses, and I also gradually found a way to express my feelings under his influence. So I think his recommendation this time should be a recognition and support for my work in recent years. In addition, Professor Sui is very enthusiastic and has been constantly recommending opportunities or providing other assistance to many outstanding young artists over the years. In short, when we have difficulties, we will think of him, and when he encounters suitable opportunities, he will also think of us.

Q: How do you view Professor Sui Jianguo's art? What are your standards for judging good art?

Of course, when it comes to contemporary art and sculpture in China, Professor Sui Jianguo is already an indispensable landmark. However, what I see is not only his personal achievements, but more importantly, the process of gradually constructing, enclosing, and clearly presenting his own spiritual world. He started from spiritual self-salvation, burst out under accumulated depression, separated from the imprint of the times, moved in space and time... Finally, he integrated the perception of his body and the experience of his life into the core of his artistic system, providing a key to open the entire value system. It's like a person standing in the center of the hall of his newly decorated house, looking around the lights and the furniture, and recalling the original intention of the design. Only at this moment can he fully believe that he has become the owner of this residence. So I think Professor Sui's art is actually the process of becoming the master of his own spiritual world, and all his works are evidence of this process.

Similarly, my standards for judging good works, good writing, good exhibitions, or good films are almost the same. The main thing is to see whether they have been constructed into their own world. When I enter a gallery, cinema, or a book, if I feel completely immersed in the world created by the author, I think it is very successful.

Q: As a young artist, what do you think is the biggest change in the world compared to their generation, and are there new propositions?

There is nearly a thirty-year age difference between our two generations, and we have experienced different social transitions during our youth, each with its own joys and sorrows. The past thirty years have been a period of transition in China's reform and opening-up, as well as a shift from the industrial era to the information era worldwide. Although we live in the same landscape society, when facing concrete realities, the elders use their 50-60 years of life experience to solve their problems, while we respond to our problems with our own 20-30 years of life attitudes. Regardless of the world's changes with obvious overall trends, new propositions for me will fall on very specific issues. Even when facing the same thing, I think different people will have completely different cognition and feelings. Therefore, I believe it is important to observe and solve specific problems in depth, rather than generalizing the applicability of standards. I also do not like to express attitudes with simple slogans or rashly label things.

Q: Your new works this time presents a completely different feeling from the previous works exhibited. The style is more minimalist, and the material has also been changed to cold, hard metal, which feels like it is moving towards extreme rationality and restraint. Why did you make this transformation in your new work?

Yes, those new works exhibited here explores another issue derived from my previous creations. My previous solo exhibition "Selected" focused on my grasp of the specificity of materials. At that time, I would focus on colliding my perception with each specific material object, and the result was a mutual correction between me and the material object.

This time, I tried to use materials to realize some intangible but seemingly very clear and consensual concepts in our cognition, such as a unit of length, and the concept of equality. We all know what these concepts mean, and they have clear definitions, even as guidelines for our expression of things. But how do you describe the images of these concepts in your mind? Do they have images? I think they do, but they are not fixed and unique. So in order to express my own understanding of these concepts, I can only rely on my personal cognition, and the relationship between my cognition and the standard definition is ambiguous, just like the persistent questioning after my previous creation "Almost Standard". Therefore, the only work from my previous solo exhibition that you can see in this exhibition is the inaccurate ruler, which is the starting point for me to explore this direction.

For the main new work this time, I even used the same material - thin steel bars - to complete it. Therefore, I said that one aspect of this exhibition shows my shift in focus from the language exploration of specific materials to the curiosity about our conceptual cognition that has already formed. On the other hand, I still look at the same material from different angles and use different methods to use the same material, allowing the properties and language of the material to be realized because of different conceptual objects. I named this exhibition "Chord". I like the uncertain state of tight strings vibrating, which can produce amazing sounds. At the same time, the "string theory" that has been discussed very hotly in recent years also brings me such inspiration - whether seemingly contradictory concepts or the contradictions inherent in concepts can be unified in different languages woven from a kind of material. So please take a look at the new works this time, each of which is a rethinking of our existing cognition.