Between: A Conversation Between a Chinese Painter and Photographer
Duo Exhibition | Chen Man x Song Yige
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Song Art Museum is located in the east of Beijing. The 199 pine trees dispersedly planted in the courtyard represent the purity and majesty of a gentleman, making the architectural structure of the Museum distinct. Since its opening in 2017, Song Art Museum has hosted a series of high-quality exhibitions.
Artists Chen Man and Song Yige at the Song Art MuseumSong Art Museum
Song Art Museum presents two artists--Chen Man and Song Yige ’s art exhibition “Between” from 11 July to 10 September, 2021. It is the first collaboration and dialogue between two artists, and also a concentrated display of their works in recent years.
View of exhibition hallSong Art Museum
Though in completely different art fields and parallel time and space, Chen Man and Song Yige tacitly chose similar content for creation.
View of exhibition hallSong Art Museum
They coincided with each other and produced a similar connection and a common sensitivity: the figure of somebody’s back, hazy and grotesque scenes, and the specious emotions, all seem to connect them like silk threads.
View of exhibition hallSong Art Museum
The exhibition attempts to use unique perspective towards photography and oil paintings of two artists--Chen Man and Song Yige, to explore the clear boundaries and hidden overlaps between Chinese traditional art and contemporary art, abstraction and concrete, traditional touches and scientific technologies.
Chen Man at the opening ceremonySong Art Museum
Between pixels and pigments
Chen Man, photographer and visual artist who established a self-independent visual language in Contemporary China, has long cooperated with internationally renowned magazines and brands.
View of exhibition hallSong Art Museum
As for Chen Man, "between" is the other side of her creation, a narrow gap, and a supplement.
View of exhibition hallSong Art Museum
During the epidemic, Chen Man created a series of fine art creations that are different from her previous fashion photography. The series of “Between” which first shown in the exhibition, is Chen Man’s thinking about the relationship.
Between·2 (2021) by Chen ManSong Art Museum
In this series, there is a huge crystal clear ice cube between the color blocks with strong visual impact. It seems gradually melting as time goes by. It is not difficult to see that in this vivid and fairy-tale picture, there is a unique mysticism and Chen Man's aesthetic taste.
With strong color contrast, she broke free of the imagination of regular color blocks, reflecting the artist's strong and rich emotions.
Song Yige at the opening ceremonySong Art Museum
Song Yige, contemporary Chinese artist.
View of exhibition hallSong Art Museum
As for Song Yige, “Between” is a distance, a tear, and a tension.
Music Boy (2018) by Song YigeSong Art Museum
Song Yige's works have a calm and deep atmosphere. He has an early insight into the essence of the human world and turns it into images and metaphors on canvas. Song has a detached attitude towards destiny and inevitability. Facing the inevitability of fate, he does not confide or resist, but quietly observes that fate treats us equally.
View of exhibition hallSong Art Museum
Among Song's nearly 40 oil paintings on display, the image of “juvenile” shows in half of them. Sometimes they show innocent and clear smiles, sometimes they close their eyes tightly as if avoiding something, sometimes they simply cover their faces or turn their backs, making it hard to guess what’s on their mind......
Dragon and Youth (2019) by Song YigeSong Art Museum
In front of "Dragon" stood a young man, the crystal ball in his hand echoed back and forth with the dragon ball in the painting behind him, constructing a dialogue between dream and reality, reality and illusion, history and the present, showing the interlaced interlaced time and space.
The boy closed his eyes tightly, and seemed to be caught in a majestic dream that lasted for thousands of years. His expression is indescribable, confusion, escape, determination, and sadness mixed in his eyebrows.
The red ropes scattered on the ground are metaphors of breaking away from the dream, and responding to the feeling that the dragon will break the barriers of time and space and dimension and break free from the wall.
Goldbach Conjecture (2020) by Song YigeSong Art Museum
The boy held up a fish in the lake. The fish was so huge that it almost surpassed the boy. The ecstatic teenager stood in the dark river holding the big fish and laughed, as if he had captured the most important thing in the world. This is like a hearty dream, a dream that only belongs to a teenager.
His happiness is so real that he could not hear any sound. This is a state with a strong sense of isolation. The deep lake behind the painting seems to be swallowing everything, eyeing and threatening the unconscious boy.
There Is a Mountain Beyond the Mountain (2018) by Song YigeSong Art Museum
In the distance of the verdant mountains beside the lake, there is a mountain that looks exactly the same, but like a fairyland. The rowing boy looked into the distance, seemingly careless, but hidden fear and anxiety about the future, as well as hope and vision.
Tao (2020) by Song YigeSong Art Museum
The painting is full of uncertainty. The "Dream of the ship" engraved on the hull is parallel to the dreamy "mountain" in the distance like a fairyland- "How can I reach the end?" has become a proposition.
The Sausage (2018) by Song YigeSong Art Museum
People often say "youth is cruel". In fact, childhood, adolescence, middle-aged, and old age are also cruel, but unspoken.
Artist conducting a tour of the exhibition hallSong Art Museum
Between human and nature
The conflict between human beings and animals is eternal. Chen Man and Song Yige's series of works jointly reveal the relationship between the animal world and man, and the relationship between man and nature.
Origin (2015) by Song YigeSong Art Museum
Song Yige took inspiration from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey and drew the bone that opened up human civilization. While uses "tools" to enjoy a convenient life, mankind is suffering from the feedback damage of technology, and also facing natural changes and choices.
View of exhibition hallSong Art Museum
Mankind is just a gravel in the universe. The bone in the painting is the return to zero, symbolizing nature and the universe.
"Zoo" (2018) by Chen ManSong Art Museum
Chen Man's "ZOO" creates this exchange relationship in a way of irony, humor and artistic. She uses an exaggerated effect to express a significant and subversive structure of power shift between human and nature.
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The roles of humans and animals are completely switched in "Zoo". Woman is locked in exquisite display cabinets, and all animals concentrate on this beautiful "commodity".
View of exhibition hallSong Art Museum
The theme of this exhibition--"Between", comprehensively interprets the collision of the two artists' starting points--"between" light and dark, mind and matter; "between" the conscious and subconscious, reality and dreams; "between" pixels and pigments.... The two artists push and resist each other, but embrace each other and coexist at the same time.
Artists Chen Man and Song Yige at the Song Art MuseumSong Art Museum
As for Chen Man, photography can bloom like flowers, and can also be quiet like a brick of ice. While as for Song Yige, she just silently depict things and let the realistic composition manifest itself. Letting beautiful moments leave traces may be the best interpretation of their works.
Exhibition Supervisor: Wang Duan
Exhibition Consultant: Yang Fan
Host: Song Art Museum | Hua Yi Brothers Art
Exhibitions Team: Studio 6
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