Opening：2018.07.21 / 15:00
Duration：2018.07.21 – 09.01
Beijing Art Now Gallery is delighted to announce the opening of Mr. Zou Cao’s solo exhibition Being through Nothing on 21 July, 2018.
Zou Cao holds an MA in Oil Painting from the Academy of Arts, Northeast Normal University, a PhD in Western Philosophy from the Academy of Philosophical and Social Studies, Jilin University, and a post-doc in the Study of Fine Arts, Central Academy of Fine Arts. His special experience of academic studies and research has infused unique characteristics of conceptual art into his artistic creation. Zou Cao artistic creation is rich and wide-ranging, which can be divided into four major categories according to time and theme:
From 2002 to 2012, Zou’s artistic creation is themed on a unique symbol -- “fingerprints”. During almost ten years, he had produced 15 series of fingerprint works. His core idea is to adopt the research methodology of western semiology to decipher the unique symbol -- “fingerprint”. From 2010 to 2015, his artistic creation changes direction to focus on the contemporary combination of traditional Chinese way of thinking and modern western art, in pursuit of a Chinese international contemporary artistic school. His efforts were shown in his solo exhibition The Secret to Clouds and Mountains staged in Today Art Museum. From 2015 onwards, Zou’s artistic creation was changed into sci-tech art, discussing the topic of the possibility of art in our future featuring big data and science and technology. He has not only produced lots of sci-tech artistic works, but also owned three independent patents of scientific inventions. From 2016 onwards, Zou’s artistic creation not only focuses on the body of traditional art, but also expands to the level of “social sculptures”. In 2016, he made joint efforts with Today Art Museum and Lenovo ThinkPad to initiate an international art navigation project Self-consciousness/Call for Actions. In 2017, he took the project to attend the parallel exhibition MODUS of the 57th Venice Biennial and won positive comments from worldwide. This exhibition was considered by Vogue and Vanity Fair as the most worthy parallel exhibition during the Biennial. The President of Venice Biennial and the President of the parallel exhibition sent letters of congratulations respectively. During the Russia World Cup which was just concluded, Zou attended an on-line video show New Three-taste Liaozhai set up by Mr. Liu Jianhong, the famous football anchorer. He was invited to comment on art and football during the 12-series show with 200 million person times video-on-demand. The social sculpture works of Zou are intended to make artistic creation as a transitional methodology instead of an ultimate purpose, so that art can be related with more people and has its own temperature and attitude.
The exhibition Being through Nothing is a bold attempt of Zou Cao to combine traditional Chinese cultural concepts and modern technology. The idea of Being through Nothing originates from Zen of traditional Chinese culture, which is concerned about the dialectic relationship between Being and Nothing, and Visibility and Invisibility. With new media technologies such as high-tech and videos, Zou explains the concept from different perspectives and viewpoints and builds up some brand-new visual forms and experience.