• Issue
  • Sep 01, 2022

Inside Burger Collection: Song Dong

POLIT-SHEER-FORM OFFICEBreaking out of a new world (Shanghai), 2011, color photograph, 120 × 215 cm. Courtesy the artists and Bank Gallery, Shanghai.

“Bourgeoisified Proletariat” is the type of exhibition that Shanghai has seen far too little of in recent years, but back in 2009 this kind of spontaneous show sprouted fairly frequently. In the coastal city’s suburban Songjiang, in an old industrial space amid its renovation into trendy offices, awkwardly large, conceptual installation sets—courtesy of both famed and emerging artists—trickled in as part of the four-day show. Among the 40-plus participants were Polit-Sheer-Form Office (PSFO), a collective formed in 2005 by renowned artists Song Dong, Liu Jianhua, Xiao Yu, and Hong Hao, along with critic and curator Leng Lin. For an artwork titled Tofu (2009), the coterie of old friends constructed in the factory a bland white cube of four thin, wooden walls. Using five axes, members of the audience and collective painstakingly hacked holes into the surface.