At the end of 2019, together with all the upcoming festivals and celebrations, Song Art Museum is pleased to announce Zhao Zhao’s solo exhibition Green as the cross-year exhibition. Inaugurated on December 20th, this exhibition will bring together Zhao’s works from 2016 to 2019, which is the highlight of his career. Cui Cancan will be the curator of this exhibition.
This is the first museum solo exhibition of Zhao Zhao in Beijing, and it is also a concentrated presentation of his works in recent years. As a representative of new art trend, Zhao’s identity and his practice are extremely diverse and expansive. He is not only an active and high-profile artist, but also a documentary director, a researcher of ancient art, and a founder of a fashion brand. His attention ranges from the re-creation of traditional Chinese culture, the imagination of spatiotemporal reality, to the response to artistic trends.
Surrounded by the serenely beautiful view of Song Art Museum, Green as a symbol of vitality presents Zhao’s thorough understanding of time, history and human relations from various aspects, which will be a meaningful and well-arranged story of art.
About the artist
Born in Xinjiang, 1982. Zhao Zhao graduated from the Xinjiang Institute of Arts, 2003. Now he works and lives in Beijing.
All along Zhao Zhao was making work with a subversive appeal of its own, keens on raising challenges on the reality and its traditional practice of art form through a various art media. Zhao Zhao is known for making sculptures, paintings and installations which examine the power of individual free will and the dynamics of state control. Zhao Zhao’s works attest to and touch on the awareness of a generation faced with dramatic change. Constantly confronted with the subject of world oppression. Notions of threat or risk are regularly present in his works, referring to the life he lives both locally and within today’s global context, as a method of questioning the historical impermanence in our contemporary society.
He is very reflective on how concerns of the collectivity co-exist with the individual’s daily expectations and dreams. His provocative, multidisciplinary artist practice has garnered him international attention in recent years, includes solo shows in galleries such as Alexander Ochs Galleries (Berlin, Germany), Carl Kostyál foundation (Stockholm, Sweden), Roberts & Tilton (Log Angeles, USA), Chambers Fine Art (New York, USA), Mizuma Art Gallery (Tokyo, Japan ), Lin & Lin Gallery (Taipei), Tang Contemporary Art ( Beijing, China ), CAAW ( Beijing, China ).
He has received the support from many international institutions, among which are listed MOMA PS1 – The Museum of Modern Art (New York, USA), Tampa Museum of Art (Florida, USA), Pinchuk Art Centre (Kiev, Ukraine) , Groninger Museum (Groningen, Netherlands), Museum of Asian Art (Berlin, Germany), Collection of Hamburg Bahnh of Museum in Berlin (Berlin, Germany), Padiglione D’Arte Contemporanea (Milan, Italy), MAXXI Museum (Rome, Italy), Tiroche DeLeon Art Collection (Paris, France), Premi internacional d’art contemporani diputació de castelló (Castelló, Spain), White Rabbit Gallery (Sydney, Australia), M+west Kowloon (Hong Kong, China), Minsheng Art Museum (Beijing, China), UCCA Center for Contemporary Art (Beijing, China), New Century Art Foundation (Beijing, China), Taikang Art Museum (Beijing, China), Luxelakes·A4 Art Museum(Chengdu, China), Minsheng Art Museum (Shanghai, China), Museum of Contemporary Art (Shanghai, China), Star Art Museum (Shanghai, China), Ming Contemporary Art Museum (Shanghai, China), Tianjin Art Museum (Tianjin, China), Hubei Museum of Art (Wuhan,China), He Xiangning Museum (Shenzhen, China), Wanlin Art Museum (Wuhan, China) and NOW IS THE TIME – 2019 Wuzhen Contemporary Art Exhibition (Zhejiang, China). In 2019, Zhao Zhao won the Thirteenth AAC Artist of the Year Award. The Project Taklamakan of his was elected as the background picture of 2017 Yokohama Triennale Poster and catalog. At the same year, he was appraised as Top 10 Chinese artist by CoBo and obtained the award nomination of Chinese annual young artist in 11th ACC (Award of Art China) and one of Modern Painters “25 Artists to Watch”.
About the curator
Cui Cancan is an active Chinese independent curator and critic. He has won CCAA (Chinese Contemporary Art Award) Art Review Award for Youth, Critics’ Award in Chinese contemporary art by YISHU, Annual Exhibition Award by Art Power 100, Nominee for Lincoln Curator Prize by TANC Asia Prize, The Best Artist Solo Exhibition of the Year Award by Chinese Contemporary Art News, Best Exhibition Award by Gallery Week Beijing, Annual Curator Award by Art Bank, etc. Since 2012, he has curated 81 major exhibitions, including group exhibitions like Hei Qiao Night Way (2013), Xiang Cun Xi jian Chui (2013), FUCKOFF II (2013), Unlived by What is Seen (2014), Between the 5th and 6th Ring Road in Beijing (2015), The Decameron (2016), Rip it Up (2017), Spring Festival Projects (2018) and The Curation Workshop (2019).
Courtesy of the artist and Song Art Museum.
