On view now at Pace Gallery in Los Angeles, The Past features new and recent paintings from contemporary Chinese artist, Li Songsong. Marked by the use of reliefs, tense brush strokes and solid color blocks, Li has developed a unique visual language, deconstructing and reconstructing images through the lens of his own experience and memories. Through texture laden works, which can have an almost optical illusion like quality depending on one's perspective, the artist invites viewers to see the world in new terms, seeking liberation from specific notions and themes through his stream of consciousness approach to painting.

At once personal and imaginative, Li has a distinct approach that is informed by the relationship between existence and the existent. Each canvas represents the sum of the artist’s idiosyncratic brushstrokes, with the placement, shapes and color determined as he works-the force that drives the pursuit of freedom on the canvas. Li’s art is forged in enactments of accumulation and subtraction, of exposure and concealment, those processes which encompass the temporal quality of his abstractions. In these portraits which depict the ever-evolving relationship between artist and creation, Li meditates on what it might mean to capture and express infinity within his compositions.