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Xue Song, born in 1965 in Zhongshan, Anhui Province, graduated from the Stage Art Department of Shanghai Theater Academy and is a contemporary Pop Artist in China. He currently lives in Shanghai.
Xue Song's works are collected by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Asia-Pacific Museum of the University of Southern California, the Museum of Modern Art in Bonn, the National Art Museum of China, the Shanghai Art Museum, the Long Art Museum, the M+ Art Museum in Hong Kong, the Bill Gates Art Foundation and other institutions.
Artist Xue Song is good at using flames and ashes as the medium, through collage means, combining all kinds of print fragments into a new image world, giving new meaning to works in the form of combustion, deconstruction and construction.
Xue Song re-touched the pulse of the times with an attitude of tracing the origin of Chinese civilization, and combined various cultural totems and classic symbols familiar to the Chinese into a new picture.
"Chinese DNA" exhibition "Calligraphy Impressions"
300cmX150cm 2020
"Spring League" multi-material of propylene on canvas
150x150cm x8 2020
Xue Song was born in 1965 in the northern part of Anhui Province, where the four provinces of Shandong, Henan, Jiangsu and Anhui meet. The folk customs and lifestyle of Zhongshan are far to the north, and it is also the place where the laozhuang philosophy was born, and the hometown has endowed the artist with a strong Central Plains cultural gene. Out of his crazy obsession with painting from an early age and his own persistence, Xue Song did not follow his parents' wishes to learn the same musical instrument with his father, or apply for mathematics, physics and chemistry, but stubbornly and stubbornly resisted the pressure to insist on painting, and finally in the third year after graduating from high school, in 1985, he was admitted to the Stage Art Department of Shanghai Theater Academy as desired.
"Chinese DNA" exhibition work "Autumn Colors"
320cm X 210cm 2020年
During his studies at the Shanghai Theater Academy, Zhang Peiji, Chen Junde, Li Shan and other teachers benefited Xue Song a lot by their words and deeds. After graduating from university in 1988, Xue Song was assigned to the Shanghai Opera House and became a stage designer, settling in Shanghai and starting his artistic career. It was also in this year that Xue Song participated in the Second Shanghai Youth Art Exhibition.
Before 1991, Xue Song, who was familiar with the history of Eastern and Western art, had a deep understanding of various genres, and had a deep affection for traditional Chinese ink and calligraphy, had been conducting various explorations and experiments based on the fusion of things, trying to find his own style path, but he had not been able to achieve his wishes. "I want to break through the Chinese tradition and surpass Western modernism, which is easy to say, but it is very difficult to do it." At the end of 1990 and the first half of 1991, xue song had two major fires in his dormitory and studio on Changshu Road in Shanghai, which not only alarmed the leaders of the unit and appeared on the Shanghai TV news, but he was also almost expelled.
"Chinese DNA" exhibition "Ice Crack"
80cm X 180cm X 3 2020
What is even more bizarre is that in 1992, there was another fire under Xue Song. The three fires before and after, in the eyes of others, each time was a disaster for Xue Song, but for Xue Song, being so "cared for" by the fire seemed to have some kind of chance - repeatedly facing the studio after being swallowed by the fire, in the face of the tragic grandeur full of debris and debris, in the scorched smell of the ears and nose, he suddenly found an indescribable artistic beauty.
"Chinese DNA" exhibition work "Law Nature Series -NO.6"
100cm X 80cm X 9 2020年
Therefore, since the beginning of the "Movement of Fire" collaged from the charred musical scores retrieved from the fire scene, xue Song has used flames, ashes and print fragments as the medium, using the classic works of art history and fashion consumption symbols as the image, taking historical images and news pictures as the content, and successively created a series of works such as "Mao", "Dialogue with the Master", "Coca-Cola", "Sanmao", "Landscape of the Old Days", "Calligraphy", "Image calligraphy", "Symbols", "Old Chinese Beauty Figure", "Feng Zikai Poetry", "Fashion", "Leap", "Happy" and so on , to create his own visual schema system and humanistic position.
Coca-Cola (panorama) Acrylic on canvas, collage, mixed materials
60cm X 50cm X9 2008
Fire eventually brought light to Xue Song's creation. "It's an accident, and it's inevitable. Before the fire, if I had not explored and experimented for a long time, it would have been impossible to find a breakthrough point. Without long-term preparation and a sense of rebellion, 10 more fires would not have helped my creation. Xue Song said, recorded in the "Interview with Xue Song" written by contemporary art critic Liu Chun.
For more than 30 years, Xue Song has created his own grand visual empire as a contemporary artist using flames, ashes and print fragments as the medium, which is unique among the many personal styles of Chinese contemporary art, and provides a new value coordinate for the development of contemporary painting art in the 21st century. With artistic classics and fashion symbols as images, historical images and news photos as content, his vocabulary is localized and his grammar is international.
"Chinese DNA" exhibition work "Four Gentlemen"
200cm X 150cm X 4 2020年
Xue Song successfully realized the Chinese transformation of Western pop art and surrealist art, "deconstruction" and "reconstruction" is his basic grammar, through cutting, burning and collage, he recombined huge images and text fragments, creating a new way of viewing and thinking. The part shapes the whole but subverts the whole, and the information constructs the image but deconstructs the image. The contradiction between macroscopic and microscopic, the conflict between form and content, constantly creates rich dramatic effects on his pictures.
"Chinese DNA" exhibition work "Bubble"
150cm X 150cm X 4 2020年
Burning is his language, collage is his brushstroke, and Xue Song compares his creative method to a "plate" with various "dishes". For him, the "dish" he most wants to make is a new challenge and an exploration under pressure. From his explorations in the early 1980s to his latest masterpieces, each work has been independently completed by Xue Song, which has been his consistent way of creating for more than three decades. He has a wide range of subjects, and in the process of creation, he has integrated and used it for himself. Since 1994, he has systematically collected more than 1,000 works in the categories of prints, Chinese paintings, oil paintings, sculptures, comic strips, propaganda drafts, and original manuscripts. For more than thirty years of artistic history, Xue Song did not rush to sort out and review, but continued to focus on the present and continue to carry out new creations.
Four seasons - spring, summer, autumn and winter, acrylic on canvas, collage, comprehensive materials
250cm X100cmX4 2018
New Landscape Ten Screen No.1 Cloth Surface Integrated Media
240 x 120 cm 2021
New Landscape Ten Screen No.2 Cloth Surface Integrated Media
New Landscape Ten Screen No.3 Cloth Surface Integrated Media
240 x 120 cm 2021
New Landscape Ten Screen No.4 Cloth Surface Integrated Media
New Landscape Ten Screen No.5 Cloth Surface Integrated Media
New Landscape Ten Screen No.6 Cloth Surface Comprehensive Media
New Landscape Ten Screen No.7 Cloth Surface Integrated Media
New Landscape Ten Screen No.8 Cloth Surface Comprehensive Media
New Landscape Ten Screen No.9 Cloth Surface Integrated Media
New Landscape Ten Screen No.10 Cloth Surface Integrated Media
Source: Network