Song Kun

signed in Chinese and Pinyin, titled in Chinese and English and dated 2004.10 on the reverse, framed

Sotheby's, Hong Kong,  6 October 2009, lot 633
Private Collection, China

12, Beijing, Central Academy of Fine Art, 2004, illustrated in colour

This work is generally in good condition.There is two very thin and stable hairline craquelure towards the center left edge, measuring 4 cm and 8 cm each. Above all only visible under close examination. There is some minor wear and handling marks around the edges. Please note that this work has not been examined out of the frame or under the UV light.
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Regarded as the "most anticipated young female artist", Song Kun tries to experience life through art. She paints with delicate sensitivity that is unique to many female artists. Beneath her brushstrokes we find various emotions such as sympathy, fear, desire, happiness and confusion. Her subjects may seem trivial, pure and simple, but her sharp critique of daily life often lies hidden under the façade.    

Created in 2004, Ice Age is infused with a dominating subjective perspective, and is filled with wonderful, mystical fantasy. Song once said, "I need complexity, subtlety and mystery, a certain level of difficulty brings me closer to the essence of things". Hence in Ice Age the artist depicts herself as the protagonist, like a fairy princess, standing alone in a surreal space in time. The ice-age landscape resembles Song Kun's own hometown, which is rooted in the deepest corner of her past. Growing up in Inner Mongolia, on Yin-Shan mountain, vast grasslands and heavy industry are indelibly imprinted in Song’s memory, who still retains a special nostalgia for this sense of desolation and freedom.

The most mesmerizing characteristic of her work is that she is able to create a misty beauty of sadness. Lost in the swirls of light and shadow, the sensual experience is gloomy and yet beautiful. As Pi Li describes the artist: "Song Kun often attempts to put together the dispersed chaos of our time with something unique. Such integration is different from the attempts of embellishment in classical context, but an indescribable, exotic fusion of aspiration and reality". Ice Age is a typical example of such pictorial language. It is as if a layer of diaphanous mist has been diffused over the canvas, like a curtain separating us from a land of memory and dreams, such that an inexpressible melancholy lingers on the canvas in perpetuity.