We are looking forward to presenting a solo-exhibition of major new works by Zhao Zhao (b. 1982) – consisting of a new series of oil-paintings titled Constellations and a monumental stainless-steel sculpture Fragments. 

After graduating from Xinjiang Institute of Arts in 2004, Zhao Zhao moved to Beijing and began a long association with Ai Weiwei, assisting him in video projects such as Beijing: Chang’an Boulevard. During this period Zhao Zhao began to produce a series of objects among which is the original Fragments (2007). Highly diverse in character – Ai Weiwei has written that “some of them are light-hearted; some are the opposite” – these objects are personal and political to varying degrees. In the case of Fragments, it was a serious motor-accident in which Zhao Zhao’s head hit the windshield of the car in which he was traveling. Saving it, he used the pattern of cracks caused by the violent impact of his forehead on the glass as the source of his stainless-steel sculpture.  Seven years later in 2014 he returned to this theme in the monumental version being exhibited here for the first time. 

Violence is implicit and crucial to the fabrication of Constellations, the series of thirty glass panels perforated with bullet-holes that were exhibited at Art Basel Hong Kong and Chambers Fine Art, New York in 2013. The fact that access to firearms is next to impossible in China was one of the primary challenges facing Zhao Zhao, the other being the selection of glass that could withstand the impact of the bullets. Once completed, the glass panels with their randomly placed bullet-holes encircled by radiating patterns of cracks were open to metaphoric interpretation, the resemblance to astral constellations being the most striking.

The four new Constellation paintings are the offspring of the 2013 glass panels placed on top of each other in different arrangements so that each painting has a distinctive character, suggestive not only of sidereal events but also of firework displays and organic or even submarine forms. In these seductive paintings the violent impact of bullets on glass seems far removed, a distant memory.  

*image (left)
courtesy of the artist and Chambers Fine Art