Zhao Yao
Zhao Yao (Chinese language: 赵要, born 1981 in Sichuan, China) is an artist in installations as well as performance, video and photography. He grew up in Sichuan and currently lives and works in Beijing. Background. Zhao Yao was born in Sichuan, China in 1981 and graduated from the Design Arts Department of the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in 2004 with a bachelor's degree. He currently lives and works in Beijing. Having received much attention in his first solo exhibition in 2010, Zhao Yao has made a significant influence upon the art world with his second and third  solo exhibitions "I am Your Night and You Can’t See Me, You Can’t See Me". He has become an increasingly important figure in the emerging generation of the contemporary art world in China. Zhao Yao’s works involve an extremely broad range of creative media, including installation, performance, video, painting, sculptures and many others, in which he forges a haptic dissonance, dislocating mundane and spiritual, sight and touch, at once ancient, contemporary, and futuristic, and manifesting the material energies of yet-to-be-named rituals. His works display a sense of humor and confidence, tranquil yet full of  tension, skillfully balancing between form and content. Through solo exhibitions, he has approached the vested exhibition system utilising a logic of interference and subversion to break down the framework of the contemporary art structure. For instance, his most recent series of works "A Painting of Thought" have a great sense of mission that approaches fundamental questions of art from the perspective of painting, particularly abstract painting. Unlike conceptual art in the general sense, this series is not expressing certain criticisms or concepts but instead practicing criticisms or concepts. His work has also been exhibited at Tate Modern (London, 2010), Fremantle  Arts Centre (Australia, 2011), Rubell Family Collection (Miami, 2013), Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum (Michigan, 2013), Pinchuk Art Centre (Ukraine, 2013), ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe (Germany, 2013), and Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (Beijing, 2013). Most recently, he was selected to participate in “Focus Beijing: the De Heus-Zomer Collection” at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (Nederland, 2014), “Inside China” at the Palais de Tokyo (Paris, 2014), and "Adventures of the Black Square:Abstract Art and Society 1915–2015" at Whitechapel Gallery (London, 2015). Selected group exhibitions. 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006  2005 2004 2003