Tong Kunniao, born in 1990 in Changsha, Hunan Province, China, now lives and works in Beijing. He graduated from the 3rd Studio of Sculpture Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2015, enrolled in the graduate school in 2016 and dropped out in the same year.
Tong Kunniao’s artworks are diverse, interspersed with installation, performance, video, sculpture, painting and other media. He is accustomed to using the (excess) products of modern society, a perpetual waste factory, and the remnants of objects that are within his reach in his daily life. Focusing on the limitations and depletion of individual identity and status by the complicated social structure, he decomposes ready-made objects, combines mechanical tandem, and introduces factors such as gravity balance, thus responding to the multiple variables and vulnerabilities between individual consciousness and social mechanisms behind the materials. At a time when worship and consumer culture symbols are prevalent and information is overloaded, the imaginary boundaries of human re-creations are constantly broken through, presenting tricky and playful reconstructions in parallel.
