He counts the stars and call them all by name
2014 - Photography (Photography)
Robert Zhao Renhui
Created during Zhao Renhui’s residency at Kadist SF in 2014, the photographic grid features a selection of some 6,000 members from single family of flies –hoverfly– identified over the last 25 years by Sacramento-based Dr. Martin Hauser, Senior Insect Biosystematist at the California Department of Food and Agriculture and longtime acquaintance of the artist. Worldwide specialist of hoverflies, Dr. Hauser collected the insect and meticulously sorted them out. The label below each fly indicates the country where it is from, its species, its size, etc. Some of the hoverflies look like bees and wasps, for a yet-unknown reason. During his career, Dr. Hauser identified many new species of hoverfly: holotypes, the single specimen upon which new nominal species are based (red tag), and isotypes that follow duplicates of the holotypes (green tags). By colliding these scientific methods of explaining the world with visual art, Zhao Renhui perhaps invites critical reflection on human’s thrift for objective knowledge and datas by blurring the lines between objective documentation and fictional narrative.
Robert Zhao Renhui’s multimedia practice questions fact-based presentations of ecological conservation and reveals the manner in which documentary, journalistic, and scientific reports sensationalize nature in order to elicit viewer sympathy. Zhao portrays humans as figures curious about their natural environment, which is at times mysterious and unpredictable. Through observing human behavior in front of animals, Zhao’s critical lens examines various modes and preconceived notions of what he calls a “zoological gaze”—the manner through which humans view animals and nature. This perspective challenges the dualistic separation between the human and the non-human worlds. Under the name of a fictional institution, The Institute of Critical Zoologists (ICZ), Zhao’s work creates visual ambiguities that destabilize assumptions about the ways in which images present facts, represent reality, and disseminate truths. Zhao was in residency at KADIST San Francisco in 2014.
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Robert Zhao Renhui
2012Expedition #46 is a work from the series “The Glacier Study Group,” which consists of artists, scientists, activists, and enthusiasts of glacial and polar activity in the Artic Circle to conduct scientific investigation, data collection, and glacier sampling...
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Mary Weatherford Revisits an ARTnews Profile of Joan Mitchell – ARTnews.com Skip to main content By Alex Greenberger Plus Icon Alex Greenberger Senior Editor, ARTnews View All September 4, 2020 10:27am ©ARTnews In 1957, art critic Irving Sandler paid a visit to the studio of painter Joan Mitchell , an Abstract Expressionist known for her brushy images capturing nature...
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Milena Bonilla
2009Milena Bonilla’s discursive practice explores connections among economics, territory, and politics through everyday interventions...
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Gan Chin Lee
2019In Studies of Chinese New Villages II Gan Chin Lee’s realism appears in the format of a fieldwork notebook; capturing present-day surroundings while unpacking their historical memory...
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Robert Zhao Renhui
2012Expedition #46 is a work from the series “The Glacier Study Group,” which consists of artists, scientists, activists, and enthusiasts of glacial and polar activity in the Artic Circle to conduct scientific investigation, data collection, and glacier sampling...
© » KADIST
Robert Zhao Renhui
2014Created during Zhao Renhui’s residency at Kadist SF in 2014, Zhao Renhui began observing and cataloguing insects inspired by the scientific impulse towards exhaustive taxonomy of Sacramento-based Dr...
© » KADIST
Robert Zhao Renhui
2012Changi, Singapore, possibly 1970s is from the series “As We Walked on Water” (2010-2012), which looks into Singapore’s history around the phenomenon of land reclamation...
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Robert Zhao Renhui
2016The photograph Proxy II (Beetles) by Robert Zhao Renhui belongs to a series, titled Christmas Island, Naturally, that focuses on the ecology of Christmas Island; a remote volcanic land formation in the Indian Ocean...
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Jonas Van and Juno B
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Henry Taylor, I Got Brothers All Ova The World But They Forget We’re Related (2023), via Hauser & Wirth Marking its inaugural outing at its new Paris exhibition space, Hauser & Wirth looks west to the work of critically acclaimed Los Angeles artist Henry Taylor, whose major career survey arrives at the Whitney Museum of American […]...