TANK Shanghai presents Suspension of Disbelief, curated by Mirela Baciak, Irene Campolmi, Helena Lugo, and Daniela Ruiz Moreno––the awardees of TANK CURATOR Prize.

The exhibition is on view until 7 May 2023. a group exhibition featuring works by Agnes Meyer-Brandis, Florencia Rodríguez Giles, Lea Guldditte Hestelund, Ursula Mayer, Tai Shani, Himali Singh Soin, Song Kun, and Nora Turato.

The exhibition is on view until 7 May 2023. a group exhibition featuring works by Agnes Meyer-Brandis, Florencia Rodríguez Giles, Lea Guldditte Hestelund, Ursula Mayer, Tai Shani, Himali Singh Soin, Song Kun, and Nora Turato.

Creating fictions, inventing otherworldliness, dreaming, and performing the speculative allow us to experience the world beyond the rules of logic. Suspension of Disbelief welcomes the improbable, the uncertain, and the unthinkable, creating a journey that draws back the human will to fantasy through the works of eight international artists. Each artist produces their own cosmologies, seducing the audience into worlds in which languages are volatile, times and identities fluid, and humans co-exist equally with, and learn from other species. 

Artist Song Kun presents 3 works at TANK Shanghai’s current exhibition “Suspension of Disbelief”—painting work Soulmate (Androgynous), LED light installation No Boundary, and music video Animist—Lofi Dance on Screen. 

Song Kun: “The works are from the “Pure Land" series that I started in 2015. On one hand, this system comes from the Eastern tradition of “Animism;” and on the other hand, it’s from the buddies description of the "Oriental Glazed  Pure Land” which is “A pure land world that is unimaginable and self-luminous.”

And I'm interested in the mixed experiences in the process of the kinds of variants which derive from the imagination of the Oriental Pure Land in the context of contemporary social realities,  and the evolution of the postmodern human’s soul and flesh in the reality where traditions, nature, internet medias, industry, and technology are in mixed presence.

Over the past few years, I have focused on depicting a series of images, which I call “Animists," and each of them has their own code name. Some of these images are virtualised by me using 3D software, and some come from real people around me. This work Soulmate (Androgynous) can be seen as one person of both sexes, or as a conjunction of a man and a woman: intimacy, the intersection of souls—confrontational in power but simultaneously united in one. In this series, I have added different styling elements for different personalities: Buddhist statues (Cao Yi Dai Shui, which is a Chinese painting technique used in Buddhist paintings), cyberpunk, living organisms, anime SD/BJD (Ball-jointed Dolls), actress portraits, oriental fantasy fairy tale visuals, etc.

An important developer of cyborg theories in the 20th century, Donna J. Haraway has precisely pointed out three boundary breakthroughs within the cyborg semantics, namely, human and animal, organism and machine, nature and unnatural.

"No Boundary" LED installation—“Oriental Glazed Land" where there is sunlight and moonlight, with an emphasis on “self-luminousness,” “cleanness, equality, and peace,” which refers to the removal of boundaries at the level of consciousness in the sense of a post-utopian ideal nation.” 

"No Boundary”(无尽藏 [wú jìn cáng])

1. Buddhist term. It is said that Buddha's virtue is vast and boundless, without end. In Chapter Fourteen of Mahayana, it goes : "The virtues are hard to be exhausted, and the name is endless. What is contained in the endless virtues is called cáng." 

2. Generally refers to what is inexhaustible in things."

Song Kun virtualised an ethnic group called the “Animists.” The female character in the  music video of the dance music track is created by the artist and code-named “Purple.” In a lofi computer bug of mixed realities in developing countries, the rendering of “Purple” was not finalised, and “Purple” lives on the screen and dances awkwardly. 

An important developer of cyborg theories in the 20th century, Donna J. Haraway has precisely pointed out three boundary breakthroughs within the cyborg semantics, namely, human and animal, organism and machine, nature and unnatural.

Song Kun's practice presents the difficultly determined areas of these boundaries in the reality of contemporary China's developments.