Biography

Zhao Zhao was born in Xinjiang, China, in 1982. He graduated with a BFA from the Xinjiang Institute of Arts from the Department of Oil Painting in 2003. The former assistant to Ai Weiwei and now regarded a significant figure among the young Post-80s generation of contemporary Chinese artists, Zhao Zhao’s work is often renowned for confronting existing ideological structures and exercising the power of individual free will in his work. His provocative, multidisciplinary artist practice has garnered him international attention in recent years as an ‘artist to watch’. Zhao Zhao’s multidisciplinary body of work is an inspection of China’s contemporary profile and the socio-political consequences of individual human action. His abstract shattered glass paintings reveal a car accident he was involved in, and represents the ripple effect of action; his Safe sculptures substantiate his fellow citizens’ paranoid views on security. Zhao Zhao has exhibited in group museum shows worldwide including JingShen: The Act of Painting in Contemporary China, Padiglione d’arte Contemporanea, Milan, Italy (2016); Zero Tolerance, MoMA PS1, New York, NY (2014); Time is a Saw: Established and Emerging Contemporary Chinese Artists, Crossman Gallery, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Whitewater, WI (2014); Humboldt Lab Dahlem, Museum of Art Art, Berlin, Germany (2013); Game of Thrones, Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Berlin, Germany (2013); Individual Growth – Motive Power of Contemporary Art, Tianjin Art Museum, Tianjin, China (2013); FUCK OFF 2, Groninger Museum, Groningen, Netherlands (2013) etc.