Layers Upon Layers Root in History in Li Songsong’s Impasto Paintings

1 hour ago7 min read

Li Songsong’s canvases are not merely paintings; they are archaeological digs rendered in oil, where history is not illustrated but physically unearthed through staggering accumulations of impasto. Each thick, deliberate stroke functions as a sedimentary layer, a tactile record of time and memory that challenges the viewer to look beyond the initial cacophony of color and texture.The artist’s technique, a masterful manipulation of heavy-bodied paint, builds a topography on the flat plane of the canvas, creating a surface so rich and corporeal that it seems to hold shadows and secrets within its peaks and valleys. This method is profoundly intentional, a visual metaphor for the complex, often obscured process of historical understanding, where narratives are built, buried, and reconstructed over time.Songsong frequently draws from found photographic sources—archival images from China’s modern history, personal snapshots, and media stills—which he then deconstructs and re-presents through this intensely physical process. The original image becomes a ghost, a faint blueprint almost entirely subsumed by the materiality of the paint, forcing a confrontation between the documented past and its messy, interpretive present.In this sense, his work operates in the same conceptual space as contemporary filmmakers who use grain and degradation to comment on memory, or even the textured, emotionally charged surfaces of Anselm Kiefer. There is a palpable tension between recognition and abstraction; a face or a figure might emerge from the tumult of pigment only to dissolve back into the sheer matter of the paint, mirroring the way collective and personal memories fade, solidify, or distort.His paintings demand a different kind of viewing—not a passive glance but an active, almost forensic examination. You must lean in, change your angle, and allow your eyes to adjust to the landscape he has built.This is not art that offers easy answers. Instead, it asks how we process the weight of history, both personal and political, and what is lost or transformed in its retelling.The impasto becomes the embodiment of this process: dense, complex, and beautiful in its resistance to a single, clear reading. For a critic, it’s a thrilling body of work that bridges the intellectual rigor of conceptual art with the raw, visceral power of expressionism, proving that the most compelling stories are often those felt rather than simply seen.

#Li Songsong

#impasto paintings

#abstract art

#oil painting

#contemporary artist

#art exhibition

#featured

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