Hanart TZ Gallery and Hanart Square are proud to present multimedia artist Yi Zhou with the solo exhibition “Sculpture Labyrinth: A Journey of My Mind – New Works by Yi Zhou”. The exhibition will run at Hanart TZ Gallery from 6 to 30 January and Hanart Square from 13 January through 29 February with a view to offering our audience a different spatial experience to enter Yi Zhou’s sculpture labyrinth.

This exhibition represents the first attempt of the artist to re-interpret her body of work from the past decade. The artist has revisited some of her most significant sculptural pieces for these new animations, abstracting and animating them with 3D modeling. For her debut at Hanart TZ Gallery, Yi Zhou will also present three new sculptures. This will be the first time since her 2011 Venice Biennale Collateral Exhibition “Days of Yi” that the artist shows her video “Labyrinth”.

“Labyrinth” was created during a time when the artist was making a transition back to Shanghai from Paris. Signs and symbols from China and Europe merge as though flowing through the stream of the unconscious. The camera eye revolves and rotates in crescendo starting from a common standpoint. Increasingly the viewer seems to lose control of her or his senses with each new spin. Elements of fire, water, sea creatures, human bodies converge to connote hope, yet they equally seem to cast doubts about faith in humanity.

Every character, landscape and building in Yi Zhou's animations is a result of intense research with her team. They reflect the daily visual research through archives, books, travel notes, as well as the constantly changing emotional hues of the artist. If Yi Zhou's body of work created in the decade between 2001 and 2011 are represented mainly by animation and digital film, the upcoming decade will probably show a fast-forward plunge into a future marked by a critical, and yet somehow nostalgic approach, and it will involve constant revisits of the artist's previous virtual works.

In 2011, Yi Zhou held a solo Collatoral Exhibition “Days of Yi” at Venice Biennale, and was selected by Sundance Film Festival for the 4th consecutive time. She lives between Shanghai and Paris.