Apocrypha 未入典: Ding Shilun
Forthcoming exhibition
Overview
Marking the artist’s largest presentation to date and his first museum show in Asia, Bernheim Gallery is pleased to present Ding Shilun’s institutional solo show at the Song Art Museum which brings together a new body of work alongside earlier pivotal paintings.
Exhibition Dates: 2026.05.21 - 2026.06.28
Location: Song Art Museum, Tongzhou, Beijing, China
At the core of this new series lies the notion of “apocrypha”; writings or stories that exist outside of official canons, considered hidden away with questionable authority. For Shilun, such marginal narratives are not peripheral but generative, revealing how imagination, misremembering, and projection actively shape our understanding of reality. This conceptual framework underpins a shift in his practice toward a more fluid and speculative mode of storytelling.
The presentation at the Song Art Museum is particularly resonant. As an institution dedicated to tracing the trajectories of Chinese contemporary art while fostering dialogue across generations, the museum provides a critical framework within which Shilun’s practice can be situated. Engaging simultaneously with the legacies of Chinese painting and the conventions of Western art history, his work articulates a position that is both historically grounded and globally informed. In this context, Apocrypha 未入典 underscores the capacity of contemporary painting to renegotiate inherited narratives, proposing alternative modes of history rooted in multiplicity, ambiguity, and imagination.
