"It is not the artist plus the brand that can make the product become a work of art, the artist just creates the concept, and the most important thing is that the consistent driving force and spirit behind the brand can really make the product call art." ——Artist Zhao Zhao
As one of the leading figures in China's modern art world, in recent years, Zhao Zhao has been bold and radical, provocative, and does not stick to one form of art practice, gradually gaining international attention, and later, the experience of holding solo exhibitions in art institutions in different countries has made him receive a lot of praise, and he has gradually been regarded as an internationally renowned emerging artist, and he is listed by modern paninters as one of the 25 most noteworthy artists in the world.
Artist Zhao Zhao, in 2014, was listed by Modern Painters as one of the 25 most noteworthy artists in the world; his work "Taklamakan Project" was selected as the background image for the poster and album of the 2017 Yokohama Triennial. In the same year, Zhao Zhao was selected as one of the top 10 Chinese artists by Cobo and won the nomination award of the 11th AAC Art China Young Artist of the Year, and in 2019, he won the 13th AAC Art China Artist of the Year Award.
Zhao Zhao has continued to work in a subversive way throughout, and he is keen to use a variety of artistic media to challenge reality and the traditional conventions of its art forms, and his works in various fields aim to explore the power of individual free will and the power of authoritative control. In his creations, he pays attention to and shows China in the midst of contemporary upheavals, and confronts the pain and pressure in the human heart. The concept of threat and risk appears from time to time in his works, alluding to people's living conditions in today's Chinese and global contexts, as well as the transience and impermanence of modern society. At the same time, the work also reflects his thinking on the coexistence of collectivism and individual ideals.
In recent years, Zhao Zhao's bold and radical artistic practice has won the attention of the international community, and he has held solo exhibitions and solo projects at the Alexander Oaks Gallery in Berlin, the carl kostyál Foundation in Stockholm, roberts & tilton in Los Angeles, The Front Wave Gallery in New York, mizuma Gallery in Japan, Linshe Gallery in Taipei, Tang Contemporary Art Center in Beijing, Beijing Art Document Warehouse, and The Song Art Museum in Beijing.
In Zhao Zhao's view, art is in the middle of the pyramid of human civilization, from science, literature to religion, as well as philosophy and metaphysics further up, art has the function of carrying on from top to bottom, so art is a very rich and diverse thing. "The big problem facing China today is that there is no connection between contemporary art and ancient art, in fact, there has been no ancient art and contemporary art in Culture and art in China for thousands of years, it has always been Meilan Bamboo Chrysanthemum and flowers, birds, fish and insects, there is no subversive change in themes or styles, but it has been gradual, as long as who has experienced this thing profoundly, who is the leader of that era." Therefore, Zhao Zhao does not want everyone to talk about art only limited to contemporary art or ancient art, nor does he want to be defined as a single identity such as "painter", "contemporary artist" or "collector of ancient art", he does not want to be "labeled", what he wants to do is a collection that breaks down prejudices.
All along, Zhao Zhao has lived in simplicity, and his life is probably interspersed between painting, creation, ancient art collection and research, and family, and he can only be caught occasionally in some important exhibitions or art auctions. For Zhao Zhao, painting was ridiculed by him as "a bend that cannot be circumvented in life". When it comes to painting, Zhao Zhao once said, "The only way I am alone with myself is to paint, so I used to paint every day for a long time, I think this is the most comfortable, it can be said that painting once saved me." ”
Zhao Zhao rejects any type of label, he often challenges the viewer with 72 changes, avoids others from casting familiar glances at his works, and likes to break the norm with strange behaviors and catch everyone off guard. Whether it's a performance, an installation, or a painting, Zhao sees them as his way of responding to his surroundings. He locked the masses in the exhibition hall at the opening of the exhibition, glued a cobblestone to Tiananmen Square, and carried out various "creations" in Beijing, a city with a strong political atmosphere. Although they are all sprinkled with "reactionary" powder from the outside world, Zhao Zhao believes that art is only a means for him to digest his own views. "When making works, they don't have to have a certain tendency, they may be a particularly natural reaction, it may be a recognition during travel. I try to do something related to myself, and I don't touch it without pain or itch. ”
In addition to art, Zhao Zhao also has his own trend brand - 305, perhaps because of his experience in operating art and trends at the same time, so that Zhao Zhao has become an artist active in the field of trends, and his cooperation with different brands and trend institutions has left a deep impression on the outside world. When it comes to art empowering fashion, Zhao Zhao naturally has his own statement: "It is not the artist plus the brand that can make the product become a work of art, the artist only creates the concept, and the most important thing is that the consistent driving force and spirit behind the brand can truly make the product call art."
The work "Control"
Recently, we can see Zhao Zhao's works in many art exhibitions. Among them, the frequently appeared "Control" works project time in the growth process of the mold gourd, which continues Zhao Zhao's consistent style and thinking. We also used this work as a medium to discuss with Zhao Zhao about the meaning behind the work, the inheritance of tenon craftsmanship and the tide aesthetics of wood.
Here's a conversation between Forbes China and artist Zhao Zhao:
"Control of Nature"
Forbes China: We have seen your work "Control", which appears in many exhibitions today, the most recent of which was the K11 Architecture Festival "Wood Construction Revival" exhibition, so what is the meaning of the creation behind it?
Zhao Zhao: I think the work "Control" is very suitable for the exhibition, through the artificial control of the growth of gourds, exploring the control of collective consciousness over people, so as to reflect on the barbaric growth state that life itself should exist. The gourd itself is not woody, but it is very close to the woody material. The gourd has ancient roots in China, and in traditional culture, it is both a Taoist magic weapon and treasure, and a spiritual sustenance place for literati hermits. However, with the change of modern culture and social changes, the use and meaning of the gourd gradually moved closer to reality and blessing, and people projected their worldly wishes on this plant with a special shape, seeking a self-proclaimed ultimate perfection.
The original growth of the gourd, its naturally formed form and the beauty of life, became a process that was constantly controlled and corrected. I started working on the "gourd" project because I discovered a characteristic of the gourd: it can grow according to human control, but people are also like this. The process of gourd growth is the interesting part of the whole work, I have the intervention of traditional craftsmanship in the growth of gourds, I design different gourd shapes, and then make a plaster mold, wait for the gourd to begin to sprout and grow, put the mold on the growing gourd, and force the gourd to grow according to people's wishes. When the gourd slowly grows up, it grows into the shape I want to design.
The title of the work "Control" means that man controls the growth of nature. Today, we can control nature, we can control wind, rain, thunder, electricity, it seems that we can control them, but even so, we have no control over the growth variation of nature, and when you control it, maybe it begins to mutate. For example, if I make a pumpkin square, but then it will go bad and not be shaped for a long time. Unlike the gourd, it grows like that, so even if it is controlled, it will not break.
《Control》
This work is a wooden table and a gourd, almost ten years ago, I began to use Ming Dynasty furniture to make works, but more on the basis of their original superposition arrangement, this work is the same. I remodeled the wooden table and made it support a huge metal gourd of nearly 200 pounds through the tenon structure, which is a very wonderful thing. In this work, the gourd controls an outward shape, while the wood is a shape that controls inwards, taking into account mechanical supports and internal structures.
Forbes China: What do you think is the meaning behind the "Wood Architecture Revival" exhibition?
Zhao Zhao: Chinese all naturally growing materials such as wood and bamboo have certain innate properties, and their understanding and application are also familiar, through which a new thing can be constructed, whether it is a house or an artifact, people can give the artifact a new way of use, or a new visual aesthetic. Especially in the past thousand years, the use of wood by Chinese is particularly exciting. From the all-wooden towers of the Song Dynasty to the Ming-style furniture, it can be called the most brilliant period of the use of wood to create and build.
We have undergone a lot of cultural changes, from industrial civilization, we have been greatly impacted, steel and iron materials have emerged, these are things that we are not familiar with. We started following the West, but we didn't use it well. At that time, the screws and nuts made could not be tightly sewn. But in turn, if you think about it, in the Song Dynasty, such a large all-wooden wooden tower, it can stand up, is that not called accurate? The mortise and tenon of all Ming-style furniture can be accurate to a few microns, just as the screws and screws of industrial civilization can be accurate to a few wires.
Why is it back to the discussion of wood today, I think this is the essence of Chinese civilization. If China can get rid of the shackles of industrial civilization in a peaceful era, it will truly explore aesthetics.
"Inheritance and Innovation"
Forbes China: We know that you personally like to use the material "wood" in your creations, so what do you think is the advantage of wood itself compared to other materials for artistic creation?
Zhao Zhao: Wood is a very open material, it can be made into anything, as long as it is any thing we can imagine today, wood can be done instead of other materials, even the earliest cars and airplanes were done with wood. There are many kinds of specific gravity and density of wood itself, so the choice from hardwood to softwood is very extensive.
For the use of wood, we are completely different from westerners, the West has plywood, but we still respect the texture of the wood itself, and will not destroy it too much and waste it. When we look at the structure of the tenon, the use and calculation of a piece of wood are very precise.
I have always been interested in wooden furniture because it not only creates a practical aesthetic. From the ancient people building houses with logs to the mortise and tenons created later, this is the process of civilization evolution. Today, we are surrounded by advanced technology in the West, and there are many strangely shaped metal furniture in the West. Because metal can make a variety of strange structures, but wood to follow its own material properties, when it wants to create a huge object, it has to find a way to get rid of the control of mechanics, people have to think about multiple complex structures, which is Chinese and Westerners think of a completely different way of thinking.
Wood itself is not a consideration of the aesthetics of the shape, but the whole mechanics affect the appearance, which is very powerful, it is not only a form, which is why I prefer to use wood as a material to make works. For example, when a Ming Dynasty square table is placed there, perhaps from the appearance, you will feel that the design of this table is very simple. However, those who really understand Ming-style furniture will know that after getting rid of the complex mechanical action, the tenon structure inside the table must be quite complicated.
Forbes China: How can a new generation of young people better inherit and revive our tenon culture?
Zhao Zhao: When you transform wood, it is still wood, after the plastic extraction forms plastic, it is no longer the plastic, or the metal extraction, it is not the metal, and only when the wood is made of wood, it is still wood. It is very authentic, and no era, no matter how it develops, cannot leave this material.
Culture is a commonality. From a macro cultural point of view, today's young people are influenced by national customs, such as Hanfu, which is the appeal of culture, and when those Western things cannot impress them, they will return to traditional culture. Chinese or traditional culture itself has a great complex, I have seen such a data, China's 1.4 billion people may only be one-tenth of the people have been on the plane, which means that only one-tenth of the people are entering a fully modern life, in other words, most of them still live in traditional civilization.
We are a big manufacturing country, we are all big countries that help others process, there is nothing worthy of confidence. When other countries withdraw their core technologies, we have nothing. So, what we lack most now is cultural self-confidence.
Today we see that many court dramas have very high ratings, which is also a mining of culture, and we are constantly excavating our own culture today, which is a very good phenomenon. I think that in China as a whole today, culture has to go back and go to its own core.
Even when we use wood today, we use wood with a new concept, not the old way. Today, there may no longer be a need for a tenon-and-tenon tower or table, but we always have this thing in our consciousness, whether it is when making any new items, we will learn from the wooden towers and Ming-style furniture of the Song Dynasty, which is culture.
"The Tide Aesthetics of Wood"
Forbes China: Do you think the future mortise and mortise process can once again lead to a new trendy aesthetic?
Zhao Zhao: In my opinion, wood itself is a trend, a trend in nature. What is a trend? The trend is to constantly push the boundaries. In fact, the growth of all trees is also a process of expanding boundaries. The trees in my yard never fight, and there is a distance between the trees and the trees, and this distance is what they will check and influence each other in their continuous growth. Its canopy is the tentacles, constantly expanding and tempting. The same is true of trends. Of course, I think wood is a very cutting-edge material in any era, in our lives, when you look up, it is all wood, and even modern furniture has a very close connection with wood.
Partnering with vans
Forbes China: Many people will be amazed that you have extremely keen observation and in-depth analysis of the things around you, so how did you form this keen observation?
Zhao Zhao: I am very interested in traditional culture myself, or I have this thing in my consciousness and am more fascinated. All cultures, like when we see the Ming-style square table, the more people who understand it, the more they can examine it in detail.
We think there's a difference between Lali and Porsche, their engines are actually similar, but the design of their exterior is completely different. But since ancient times, Ming-style furniture has no brand and logo, and it was only in recent years that there was a so-called brand. A wooden pagoda, a Buddha statue, we may not know that it was created, maybe it is an anonymous traditional artist, which is very good. It can be seen that China attaches great importance to the kernel.
Paying attention to Ming Dynasty furniture for a long time will also have a special feeling for its craftsmanship and details. For example, when I buy Ming Dynasty furniture, if I see two pieces of furniture, there are similarities in small details, I will feel that these two pieces of furniture may be from the same craftsman's hand, even if hundreds of years have passed, but this familiar feeling will appear immediately.
Forbes China: After experiencing this epidemic, do you have any new ideas about the design concept in the post-epidemic era?
Zhao Zhao: The epidemic has given me more time to do some research work, and it has also given me some enlightenment. Both the most backward and the most developed countries are in a state of stagnation because of the epidemic, and this state is not changed by technology, for the rich and the poor, and everyone must stay at home, which is a reality that human beings must experience.
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