Two thousand years ago, Han figurines, limited edition sneakers, extinct Tocharian, white cotton, marble bamboo ladders, quick instant noodles, shooting glass, LV bags, Buddhist spells... All kinds of objects, all kinds of beauty, all kinds of value standards merge and conflict in the same exhibition, and Zhao Zhao seems to open a window for us to gaze at the contemporary world.
On March 20th, artist Zhao Zhao's new exhibition "Zhao Zhao" opened at the First Space of the Contemporary Tang Art Center in Beijing. The exhibition is curated by Cui Cancan, exhibiting many groups of works such as "Window", "Black Mirror Starry Sky", "China Ladder", "Spread", "Self-Discipline", "God Statue" and so on.
Artist Zhao Zhao
Zhao Zhao was born in 1982 in Xinjiang, China, and now lives and works in Beijing and Los Angeles. As an iconic figure of a new generation of art, Zhao Zhao pioneered a new way of working. His artistic vision is extremely broad, and his work and life also span multiple fields. From the establishment of the tide brand, the design of the brand, the management of the space, the compilation of the series of books, to the collection of ancient cultural relics and the almost demanding study of the way of life. Zhao Zhao breaks the boundaries between conceptual artists, fashion designers and public stars, and smooths out the gap between art and life and life.
Exhibition site
The work "Window" is quite metaphorical. It imitates the display of high-end luxury goods in shopping malls, but it is actually a display of the source of the artist's ideas.
What's in the window? An oracle bone outlines the origin of the text, and the swastika pattern smeared on a Jade Vase of the Qing Dynasty hints at Zhao Zhao's attitude toward the transformation of tradition, where everything is used. A Tibetan Buddhist gilded bergamot picked up the handbag he had designed for LV, which had similar materials but originated from different cultural beliefs; several mysterious meteorites lay like eggs in cotton, the cold and hard unknown was wrapped in warmth and softness, and there was a certain indescribable poetry of life; a pair of shoes designed by Zhao Zhao for VANS stepped on a bag of instant noodles, fast, fashionable, consumable, exaggerated, and commercial. In the distance, a 3-century clay statue of a Buddha head watched as it all happened.
Exhibition Scene Zhao Zhao's Work "Black Mirror Starry Sky"
The "Starry Sky" series is Zhao Zhao's most representative works in recent years, and it is also his journey to dialogue with history again and again. Starting with the earliest Starry Sky, a piece of glass hit by a bullet remembers a prominent and hidden history at the end of the 20th century. After that, "Yubi Starry Sky" brings the dialogue back to more than 7,000 years ago, returning to the mysterious energy and the heavens and the earth, the sun and the moon of the ceremonial era.
In the exhibition's "Black Mirror Starry Sky", Zhao Zhao again directs our eyes to the Sheng Tang Dynasty, leading to the beginning of east-west exchanges. Three Tang Dynasty sea beast grape mirrors are embedded in the glass and become the center of the space. On the back of the mirror, animals such as beasts, partridges, horses, and sika deer run and fly among the vines. The beast originated in the West, the grape originated in the western region, and then spread to China through the Silk Road. The elaborate and rich decoration style fully embodies the beautiful vision of multi-ethnic culture and the integration of The East and the West in the Prosperous Tang Dynasty, and has become a small social microcosm.
Exhibition Scene Zhao Zhao's Work "China Ladder"
In Tibetan legend, the heavens have thirteen floors, and a ladder connects the heavens and the earth. The young lama said, I look at the mountains, layer by layer, like ladders, and I think that one day my soul will step on these ladders and go to heaven.
In religion and legend, the ladder is time, the hope of the ascent. Zhao Zhao's "Chinese Ladder" is made of marble, and the hard material makes its spiritual direction solidified, and it can be closer to eternity, purity and immortality.
Exhibition scene Zhao Zhao's works "Spread" series
In the 2020 exhibition "White", Zhao Zhao used cotton to build a labyrinth at the Contemporary Tang Art Center, which became a white landscape, symbolizing the history of cotton and the plunder of civilization, labor, harvest, and sin; purity, confusion, and money.
In Spread, symbols from Buddhism with auspicious and eternal meanings replace the garden-like labyrinth and become another feeling and spiritual direction of white. The symbol ignites in the white cotton, spreads, burns, and finally becomes a black ash. In this ritualistic process, all the history of cotton, the deep meaning and past symbolized by the old world, are burned out.
Exhibition scene Zhao Zhao's works "God Statue" series
Zhao Zhao was born in Xinjiang, and his childhood memories of the western regions left a deep mark on his mind. Today, he re-paints and writes the long-disappeared "Book of Heaven" on the pictures of Buddhist sites in the Western Regions or the remains of the Silk Road. These relics include the five trees of the Han Dynasty, the Kaiyuan Tongbao of the Tang Dynasty, the ancient city of the Guishuang Empire, and the Buddha statues of Pakistan. The scripts used are Tocharian, Serbian, Lithic, Brahmi, etc. Dynasties and civilizations that were once prominent are now long gone, leaving only some ruins and only a few words.
Zhao Zhao recombined these fragmentary pieces of information and drew them into mysterious, strange, but somewhat familiar information in a variety of words. Precise images and exact text become unrecognizable symbols here.
Showroom scene
Curator Cui Cancan pointed out that Zhao Zhao has applied and opened up the possibility of multiple media without any taboos, and has ventured into many different fields, such as cultural relics, books, art, design, text, pictures, goods, advertising and so on. He is describing the era itself, and he is confronting the era itself that cannot be confronted. It all seems cluttered, empty, boring, but also troublesome.
This new work redefines art, "making it incredible." ”
The exhibition runs until May 5.