Gallery Yang will unveil Kong Lingnan’s solo exhibition “Contours” on August 5, 2017. This is the third exhibition the artist has presented at the gallery, following her exhibitions in 2012 and 2014. This exhibition will present the artist’s recent works of painting and installation. It will be on view at Gallery Yang through September 24.
Over the past seven years, Kong Lingnan has maintained a focus on the relationships among humans and between humans and the world. The way she has chosen to discuss and make work is not of immersing herself, but instead observing from a limitless distance. This distance allows us to see ourselves and all living creatures alike. The human figures in Kong Lingnan’s early works were so small that only there physical movements were distinguishable. In the “Beach” series of her last exhibition, even the distinguishability of human figures was diminished. In this course of her work’s development, Kong Lingnan’s perspective stretched from being far-sighted to looking down from a high altitude. The islands of the exhibition seemed to be more like a cellular organism drifting in the universe. The people on the beach, too, became a group that had shed its individuality.
In her new exhibition, Kong Lingnan assumes her previous perspective once again, attempting to delineate from afar the individual and the collective, using painting and installation as media for advancing the self. “We are able to practice observation of dust, rocks, mountains, rivers, ocean, plans, animals, and other humans. In identifying the other’s innumerable, trivial bits of information, we define ourselves. There is nothing else that can form ourselves like we humans do. The numerous memes created by human civilization transform each individual into a flowing collective. And yet, the individual can potentially produce a new meme, just as the meaning of life can only be produced in the course of living. As humans create the world, the simultaneously construct a self in the reflections that reverberate between their forms and the world's.”
About the artist
Kong Lingnan was born in Jilin in 1983. She graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2007, and she currently lives and works in Beijing. Her solo exhibitions include Beach (Gallery Yang, 2014), Write on Water (Gallery Yang, 2012), Only on Her Body (Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, 2011). Her projects include A307 (Honyuan Apartment A307, 2015) and Coastline (Art Project CZ, 2014). She has participated in group exhibitions at a number of institutions and galleries, including the Guanshanyue Art Museum, Tang Contemporary Art Center in Bangkok, Sishang Museum, Antenna Space, UCCA, and CAFA Art Museum.
About the exhibition
Dates: Aug 5, 2017 – Sep 24, 2017
Venue: Gallery Yang
Opening: August 5, 4:00pm
Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Yang.
