Mirage: Ding Shilun

Bernheim is delighted to announce “Mirage”, the second solo show of Ding Shilun with the gallery and his first solo exhibition in London. Comprising a new body of work, with paintings on an ambitious scale as well as a substantial set of works on paper, we are thrilled to present this theatrical and sincere advancement in the practice. 

Ding Shilun, even at such a young age, has come to be known for a singular approach which encapsulates varying modes and motifs of thinking and visualising existence. His classical training and inspiration from the traditions of his Chinese upbringing merge with deep interests and understanding of international mores, cultural symbols and art history merge in ways playful and profound. Their being unusual and remarkable come from their being, frankly, new experiences.
Shilun’s work is denser than ever here. These works are difficult to apprehend in their totality, to comprehend as moments. And, yet, they are urgent, with an immediacy that captures the viewer.
As the artist puts it, the paintings are “sugar coated bullets”, their beauty draws a line towards the sublime, an experience that simultaneously tempts and repels, overwhelming with details and textures and the intricacy of the figures without sacrificing the rapture of the painterly. With “Mirage”, Shilun exploits the gallery as an elaborate theatre with each work serving as a stage on which multiple performances and narratives enact concurrently. Far from frozen frames, these paintings discount preconceived notions of the now. Graphic and painterly, narrative and open, they convey debauchery and virtue as indistinguishable, a transcendental illusiveness. It is in this way that Shilun goes beyond the Kantian definition of the sublime, rather he creates another sphere of time. To quote J-F Lyotard’s essay The Sublime and the Avant-Garde, “Rather, it is what dismantles consciousness, what dismisses consciousness; it is what consciousness cannot formulate, and even what consciousness forgets in order to compose itself.”

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info@bernheimgallery.com