On the occasion of her first institutional solo exhibition, Song Ruijin unfolds a world in which points of reference collapse: the sky becomes ground, the interior merges with the exterior. Bringing together a new series of paintings and ceramic sculptures within a site-specific installation, the artist constructs an unstable universe populated by emojis that evoke the alienation of individuals and, more broadly, the absurdity of the world within the context of digital capitalism, closely tied to information overload and visual overstimulation. Through a syncretic visual language, combining accumulations of imagery that are at times reassuring and at others anxiety-inducing, Song Ruijin proposes a sensory and intuitive experience in which the human and non-human creatures she depicts appear subjected to logics of exploitation and control that permeate our everyday environments.
Biography
Song Ruijin (*2003, Kunming, China; lives and works between Geneva and Paris) develops a practice spanning painting, ceramics, metalwork, and printmaking. She approaches creation as a process of continuous digging, an inner “burrow” that is chaotic, secretive, and ever-expanding, where each work becomes an exploration without a fixed trajectory. Her painting emerges from an intuitive dialogue with the canvas, without a predetermined intention. Through layering, rotating, and disrupting images, she seeks to break visual automatisms and allow a raw form of vision to surface, letting herself be guided by the process rather than controlling it. Marked by a sensitivity to the fragility of life, shaped by childhood memories of death and an awareness of working-class labor, her work pays close attention to vulnerable existences and their quiet intensity.
A graduate of HEAD–Geneva, Song Ruijin recently exhibited her work in a solo exhibition at MALA, in Lisbon, organized in collaboration with Halle Nord.
