63.3 x 120 cm
Zhou Tao spent almost two years in 2017 and 2018 in an eco-industrial park at the foot of the Kunlun Mountains in China exploring the activities of humans and other species in that particular topography between the mountain, the land and the desert. From the discovery of ancient desert villages to the billions of black chickens that will be raised under the snow-covered Kunlun Mountains, the resulting film and the photographs capture the climate and landscape, listening to the desert’s chanting and whispering, while attempting to construct a unique topology. Shot during the film production, the accompanying stunning photograph Winter North Summer South No. 2 shows a tightly framed tableaux of plants, trees, dust, water, sky; a topographical snapshot of the unique space that Zhao Tao’s project seeks to map out.
Artist Zhou Tao has a diverse and varied practice, and notably, he denies the existence of any singular or real narrative or space. Depicting subtle and often humorous interactions with people, things, actions, and situations, Zhou is known for his films that invite us to experience the multiple trajectories of reality; what he calls the “folding scenario” or the “zone with folds.” For him, the use of video is not a deliberate choice of artistic language or medium, instead the operation of the camera is a way of being that blends itself with everyday life. In his work, Zhou connects seemingly disparate milieus, turning his attention to often ignored sites that exist on the threshold between the natural and the artificial. The visual narratives merge different spatial constructs such as landscapes, the metropolis, construction sites, parks, public squares, and wastelands.
For the two-channel work Asking the Repentistas – Peneira & Sonhador – to remix my octopus works Shimabuku asked two Brazilian street singers to compose a ballad about his previous works with octopi (in which he created traditional Japanese ceramic vessels to catch octopi, with a fisherman who took him on his boat to test them out as we can see on one of the channel)...
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On Taipei Arts Festival with Tang Fu Kuen | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Articles October 25, 2018 By Yuka Sugiyama (480 words, three-minute read) The Taipei Arts Festival (TAF) began in 1998 as one of the main festivals in Taipei to mark the city’s contemporary consciousness through the staging of multiple artistic activities for international and national audiences...
Taking archaeology as her departure point to examine the trajectories of replicated and displaced objects, “Who will measure the space, who will tell me the time?” was produced in Oaxaca for her exhibition of the same title at the Contemporary Museum of Oaxaca (MACO) in 2015...
The series Nightmare Wallpapers represents a shift if Chuen’s practice, allowing the artist to immerse himself in an “artistic pilgrimage of self healing” following the failure of the 2014 Umbrella Movement...
One Day in the Mountain is a bilingual calligraphic performance piece written in ink superimposed with food leftover from a meal...
Gastaldon has made a number of soft sculptures using materials associated with knitting and sewing that have alternately fetishistic, nightmarish or contemplative qualities...