Dance on the Black Soil

Co-organized by WU SPACE and Star Gallery, Gong Lilong: Dancing on the Black Soil opens on September 29, 2026, at WU SPACE in Shenyang. Serving as the artist's first major retrospective following his passing and his inaugural solo exhibition in Shenyang—where he lived and worked for decades—the exhibition features over 150 works spanning 1972 to 2024. Encompassing oil, acrylic, gouache, and drawing, it retraces more than fifty years of Gong Lilong’s practice, re-examining an artist deeply rooted in Northeast China and his idiosyncratic, unvarnished visual language that directly responded to the spirit of the era, regional identity, and lived human experience.

Gong Lilong’s painting was perpetually bound to his lived experience. From early life sketches and '85 Movement explorations of urban life and modernism, to his 1990s return to native soil where "dance" emerged as a central motif—extending bodily rhythm into intimate relationships and cosmic connections—his work forged a highly personal spiritual realm. Even in his final years following a Parkinson’s diagnosis, Gong produced his grandest masterpiece, Corn Land, continuously shattering painterly conventions with a late style marked by liberated, singular, and spiritually charged vigor.

Rather than relying on grandiose historical narratives, Gong derived power from concrete, humble realities, maintaining an acute sensitivity toward the bodies and lives of everyday people. Co-curated by Wang Xingwei and Fang Fang, this exhibition offers a systematic review of Gong’s artistic legacy. Re-evaluating Gong Lilong—often seen as a harbinger of the "Northeastern Renaissance"—opens a pivotal entry point for reconsidering the trajectory of Chinese painting since the Reform and Opening-up era.