Song Ta's Gel Pen Drawing

Ginkgo Space is pleased to announce that “Song Ta’s Gel Pen Drawing”, the artist’s second solo exhibition will open on June 1st in Shanghai Ginkgo Space. The seven drawings on paper display in this exhibition show Song Ta’s long-standing practice of using gel pens to create and write in daily life. These new pieces mark a bold step forward with artist drawn swiftly and steadily in gel pen on industrial paper cut into whiteboards size.

Song Ta thinks that only speed can simultaneously reconcile the great paradox of classical aesthetics—between the expressive brushwork (Xieyi) and the claborate-style painting (Gongbi). Rather than hybridizing these seemingly opposing concepts, he seeks to restore their original essence, believing they were always one and the same. At the core of Song Ta's aesthetics is a rejection of drawing's fallibility, complexity, calculation, and repetition. Through the form of the improvised sketch, he overturns the typical creation process of draft–design–revision–completion. Song Ta engages in a calligraphic (or handwriting-like) mode of drawing, compressing the temporal gap between inspiration and precise execution to almost zero.

The explosive power in his work stems from decades of calligraphy practice and his profound understanding of Chinese character structural and composition law. Through the body’s movement across long lines, the use of minimalist comic imagery and the employment of convenient supermarket materials, Song Ta’s gel pen sketches embody a sensory moment—an invisible flash of light or electricity captured in visual form.

In an age of involution, Song Ta’s works answer the pressing anxiety: how to innovate at a higher level. The relaxed, almost casual attitude in his creation becomes a new aesthetic feature—where material, technique, and concept align into an increasingly refined aesthetic style. Magazines, cars, swords, home interiors, mythical creatures…these elements in artworks serve as both personal perspective and shared narrative. Each piece unfolds a prose poem, transcending compositional constraints. When the viewer reads the lines and forms, the images seem to leap from the paper, brimming with vitality and energy, this is how the contemporary inheritance of the Chinese spirit of ‘free and unfettered’ is performed. Therefore, Song Ta’s artistic contributions extend far beyond the medium of drawing, seeking to revitalize the cultural and social function of art at present.

Song Ta, (born in Guangdong, 1988) graduated from Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in 2010, received a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation for Asian Culture Cuncil in 2015 and won the Paulo Cunha e Silva Art Award from the Porto City Council of Portugal in 2020.

Recent solo exhibitions include: Song Ta's Gel Pen Drawing (Ginkgo Space, Shanghai, 2025); Selected Essays on Painting and Calligraphy (Ginkgo Space, Shenzhen, 2024); Song Ta’s Visit to Taiwan (Hy-phen Art Center, Taipei, 2022); Hanfu Architecture + Gel Pen Calligraphy (ZIWU, Shanghai, 2021), and Song Ta's Paintings: 1999-2020 (Beijing Commune, Beijing, 2020).

His works have been exhibited in the National Museum of Indonesia; Julia Stoschek Collection Foundation, Düsseldorf; Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden, Germany; UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing; Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland; Marres, House for Contemporary Culture, Maastricht, Netherlands; CASS Sculpture Foundation, UK; Asia Cultural Center, South Korea; The Zentrum Paul Klee, Switzerland; Museu Do Porto, Portugal; Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah, the United Arab Emirates; Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria; Lunds Konsthall, Sweden; Times Art Museum, Guangdong and other contemporary art institutions. Also participated in the 19th Jakarta Biennale; the 4th New Museum Triennale in New York; the 8th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale and the 6th Home Works: A Forum on Cultural Practices, Ashkal Alwan, Beirut, Lebanon.

Public collections include: the M+ Visual Culture Museum of Hong Kong, the Kadist Art Foundation of San Francisco / Paris, France and the New Century Art Foundation of Beijing.