You will be reborn as a pure body / The next synthesis. Perhaps, our return to the past is solely the preparation for a historical upgrade, as it was chanted in Song's music video for the exhibition this time: Yet she also longs for the unbounded imagination of future generations. But to where would time lead us? Song feels nostalgic for the purity, solemnity and emotional sincerity of the classical period. At a time when art is plagued by ethical and theoretical crises, this perception of time and sensibility are rare to come by. All that belongs to the present is transitory, a chance occurrence, a segment of history in the making which can be boiled down to time. On this level, Song's artworks are not only a posteriori and rooted in the here and now, but also transcendental and travelling between the past and future. She likes the imageries of waves and transparent materials, which to her signify the state of coming from nowhere, the concept of no self, and the acceptance of no certainty. Aside from paintings, she employs live music, music videos, installations and other media to create apperception, to connect diverse art forms, and to coalesce virtuality with reality. There, the artist bridges between humans and objects, emotions and rational order, desire and soberness, flesh and bone, as well as life and death. For the same reason, an animized race takes centre stage in her latest works. She works among different mediums in an attempt to recover a sensibility barred off by rules and restrictions. She is, therefore, also a border-crosser and a healer. Song remains an animist in the face of contemporary society and culture. Within this remarkable beauty lies the spirit and soul of Song's oeuvres. Song is linked to the beauty of synthetic materials, of human flesh and mechanical apparatus, of ambient, emo and electronic music, of fashion, of Renaissance portraiture, Buddhism beliefs and a distinctively Chinese character. Of course, the times of Song is far from that of Sontag. 'From the vantage point of this new sensibility, the beauty of a machine or of the solution to a mathematical problem, of a painting by Jasper Johns, of a film by JeanLuc Godard, and of the personalities and music of the Beatles is equally accessible.' 1 Here, 'she' can be understood as the new sensibility prescribed by Susan Sontag. In Song's work, 'women' is not a social identity, but a continuously generated dimension beyond boundary, spanning from personal experiences to the grand narrative. Song endows upon them a mythic sci-fi sex appeal, as well as a swift yet tangible sensibility in characterization, styling and her brushstroke. They are the fantasized bodies, the cyborg bodies, the BJD bodies and bodies in bondage. Though placed under various conditions, the female bodies in her paintings are all transcending or alienated from reality. She paints herself, and paints others through herself or vice versa. As a woman, Song has an implicit understanding of womanhood. These figures and forms depict women first and foremost. In this day and age, she is concocting magnificent paradigms from miscellaneous identities and dreams. They convey a sensibility through rigorous forms, and moreover, an ideal beauty of the new generation, which almost renders Song's paintings classical in a sense.
But the bodies in Song's artworks are not mere signifiers. Or rather, it is imprisoned as mere signifiers within gender politics. As a classic motif in art history, the body is under constant trials nowadays. It refers back to not only her gender, but also her solid academic background.
The human body, and above all the female body, is of Song Kun's greatest interest and artistic command.