The exhibition “The Dancing Floor of the World” draws inspiration from today’s artists’ reflection and contemplation on social scenes. In the wake of the rapid development of globalization since 2000, the globalization of technology has also surged forward. The concept of “Being Digital” introduced by Negroponte at the end of the last century has become our everyday reality. Therefore, the “social scenes” described in artists’ works are no longer simply reflections of real life but become virtual digital life scenes. From reality to the virtual world, social networks, games, and online media constitute virtual “social scenes” involving more publicness. In recent years, “social scenes” have evolved with the further advancement of internet media, presenting themselves to artists in a more complex and diverse manner. Therefore, today’s paintings carry a heightened sense of “publicness” unparalleled in previous times. Mr. Xu Bing, when explaining his work Dragonfly Eyes, stated that today’s world is a huge studio. In this way, the bustling and complex social scenes just resemble a vast “The dancing floor of the world,” isn’t that so?
The art of today is essentially installation as what constitutes it is the fundamental elements of ready-made. Materially speaking, paints, canvases, frames, conceptualized images, symbols, subjects, and themes are all artifacts with historical value. What is even worse or more interesting is that—to make sense of art—art as a concept and the values of a single art piece must be set in a certain context along with other materials or conceptualized ready-made. Although painting in the traditional sense remains and is periodically being created, it has detached from the representational and expressive functions of its own. That being said, in a typological sense, most paintings of today have long since become installations.
Tong Kunniao’s most recent paintings can be readily described as installations since the images in his paintings are sourced from his previous installations, such as the figure of a cyborg human. Flowers and birds in Tong’s paintings can be attributed to the influence of traditional Chinese painting such as that of the Song dynasty. Stylistically, the brush-and-ink style is a combination of the careful realist gongbi technique and the interpretive, expressive xieyi style, one that adds a sensibility of illustration of today to it in terms of the placement and arrangement of objects. The frames and their ornate detailing outside the paintings together with the easels have enhanced the attributes of an installation in an archetypical sense. To put it another way, Tong begins by making a painting of an installation to create a new series of visual installations out of the images that have been designed for the installation and other images in the existing painting and eventually places the ready-made work on an easel. Interestingly, the installation characteristics of a painting are fully exposed if the concept of “easel painting” is brought to light intuitively. In essence, the original themes, artistic language, style, and artistic genres are profoundly disturbed yet simultaneously unified in the coherent, natural style of Tong Kunniao.（Bao Dong, Wilted Flowers, the Bad Bird, and Q）
Tong Kunniao
Tong Kunniao, born in 1990 in Changsha, Hunan Province, received his BFA from No.3 Studio, Department of Sculpture at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2015. In 2016, he went to graduate school and dropped out in the same year. He currently lives and works in Beijing.
Tong Kunniao’s works across installation, performance, video, sculpture, and painting. He is adept at using “excess products” generated by the modern world—a perpetual waste-making factory, and “leftovers” that have been found in resale shops, the flea markets or on the streets. He concerns about how the complex social structure has determined our social status and eaten up our individual identities. By decomposing ready-made objects and reassembling them in tandem or keeping them perfectly in balance, Tong aims to demonstrate the individual consciousness (the free spirit) behind the objects as well as the multiplicity and fragility of the system. In an era when commodity fetishism and symbol consumption are prevalent, and information is overloaded, Tong’s work extends beyond formal boundaries of reconstruction and presents it in a quirky and seemly absurd manner.
His exhibitions in the last years: Wilted Flowers, the Bad Bird and Q (PIFO Gallery, Beijing, China, 2023), Wiltopia (Hua International, Berlin, Germany, 2022), The Myth of Human Nature (Setareh Gallery, Düsseldorf, Germany, 2022), Artist’s Game (OCAT Shenzhen, Shenzhen, China, 2022), Sailing (TAG Art Museum, Qingdao, China, 2022), The Exhibition of Annul of Contemporary Art of China Shanghai 2020 (Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai, China, 2021), Futurism of the Past—— Contemplating the Past and Future in Chinese Contemporary Art (Beijing Exhibition Center, Beijing, China, 2021), I Am the Nature -on Vulnerability, Survival in A Society at Risk, 26th Rohkunstbau (Brandenburg, Germany, 2021), Golden Dystopia on Three Millimeters (Cc Foundation Shanghai, Shanghai, China, 2021), NIAO x KUN x TONG (Jupiter Museum, Shenzhen, China, 2020), I don’t MISS u (XPM, Changsha, China, 2019), Dans Le Ventre Du Pigenon, Il Y A Non Seulement Du Caca, Mais Du Pain Aussi (Liusa Wang Gallery, Paris, France, 2017), Over Pop (Yuz Art Museum, Shanghai, China, 2016), Why Don’t You Eat Stinky Tofu? (Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, USA, 2016), Dreaming a Baton the Floor (Platform China Contemporary Art Institute, Beijing, China, 2016). etc.
Semi-Manual Era: The Dancing Floor of the World
Gravity Art Museum, Beijing
2024.06.29-09.22
