BONIAN SPACE is pleased to announce the solo exhibition of artist Sofia Soong, La vita davanti a sé, from March 4 to March 30, 2023. This exhibition is also the first exhibition after BONIAN SPACE moved to the 798 Art District. The exhibition will present more than 20 paintings, sculptures, and installations created by Sofia Soong during the past 10 years. The exhibition is academically hosted by artist and curator Huang Rui, and special thanks to Mr. Chen Danqing for the writing.
More than a decade ago, Sofia Soong, like all art students, was going through the typical hierarchy of hardships, from plaster figures to color sketches - another post-80s child fell into the trap of painting. Did she want to follow the outdated and tedious path of painting, just like the previous generations had done?
Today, Sofia Soong enjoys shuttling back and forth between two-dimensional paintings and three-dimensional objects, like playing a game. Painting is no longer a single and tedious journey for her.
At first, she painted a set of small frames covering the dignified still life behind the curtain (each frame embedded with a world-famous painting), which was considered her style, and the image was quite tranquil and beautiful. The following year, she depicted a glove stuffed into a wine glass and the twisted curtain, also a still life, but it seemed to have a metaphor for manipulating the objects by herself. Next year, she suddenly put down her brush and directly controlled real objects - a quick leap - she stacked tens of thousands of authentic Danish LEGO toys into an installation, and childhood memories were awakened. In another attempt, the small frames and famous paintings in her still life paintings were densely arranged, paired with symbols of an eye chart.
Games, like conceptual and multimedia art, as the artist plays them, will make their more daring and curious, thus quickly upgrading their skills. She called the stacked toys “Taihu stones” and molded the wax material into Taihu stone shapes. Once she started creating three-dimensional objects - sometimes by molding clay and sometimes by using ready-made items - her creativity further opened up. Around 2019, she painted white plaster figures - the standard object that tortures all beginner painters - with various colors or split the plaster figures open and drew graffiti on the hollow interior. This kind of behavior, which turned the torture of plaster figures around, was almost childish revenge. At the same time, three of Koons’s versions of rabbit dolls (along with her hand-molded chubby baby series) were given hats and clothes and titled “I also Want to be Famous.”
Yes, in the stale art education, Sofia Soong was one of the countless hostages of the academy routine. Still, smart hostages longed for new values outside the window - or, as Andy Warhol said: everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes - she never forgot that she was living in the new century. She stuck her head out of the prison of painting (just as a child would daydream during class), constantly looking around for new things happening and daringly trying things out with mischief and unwillingness.
But she does not want to say goodbye to painting because she has tasted freedom and autonomy in the game of objects. At this point, painting is no longer the only value but one of the options. At least, she found a two-way game between flat painting and three-dimensional objects - recently, for reasons that only she can explain, Sofia Soong’s paintings have returned to fabric curtains. Compared to the still lifes she painted ten years ago, her understanding of “still life,” “object,” especially the awareness of painting, is more straightforward, more intuitive, and brings out the secret messages from her heart.
It is no longer a piece of the scarlet curtain but a curtain waiting to be opened, like a stage, opening, closing, or just a curtain, but behind it hides Sofia Soong’s inner plot. In this exhibition, she may expect the audience to glimpse the path of her self-growth in the process of her tenuous relationship with painting.
