SCREEN is delighted to be partnering with Asia Contemporary Art Week to introduce artists on the rise. This year, SCREEN will premiere the film of Zhao Zhao, the grandest work from the Chinese artist to date, Project Taklamakan in New York. The screening will be followed by an artist talk with art critic Tom Looser and a reception. The artist will be present.
Date : November 14th, 2016
Time: 6:30- 8:30pm
Venue: artnet news, 26th fl, 233 Broadway
RSVP required
Seating is limited
About Project Taklamakan
100 Kilometers of electrical cable, transformers, refrigerator; HD color video with sound, 120 mins. 2015
In October 2015, Zhao Zhao worked on Project Taklamakan in Xinjiang for 23 days. He and a thirty-strong team traveled 4,000 kilometers with a 100-kilometer-long 4 core cable and a refrigerator from Beijing to the town of Luntai on the north end of the Taklamakan Desert. Zhao Zhao negotiated with a rural Uighur family to connect their electricity after agreeing to pay a fee. Next, he followed the edges of the desert highway through a poplar forest, generally heading south. Using a refitted Pathfinder and 10 transformers, he laid the 100-kilomater cable in the desert until he reached the center of the Taklamakan Desert. The end of the cable was connected to a double-door refrigerator full of Sinkiang(Xinjiang)Beer, running the appliance for 24 hours in an expansive, uninhabited desert. Seven days later, the 100-kilometer cable, the transformers, and the refrigerator were sent back to Beijing, where the cable was cut into precise 1.86 meter sections, based on the height of the refrigerator.
About the Artist
Born 1982, Xinjiang, China
Born in 1982 in Xinjiang, China, Zhao Zhao graduated from the Xinjiang Institute of the Arts in 2003 and later attended the Beijing Film Academy. 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 associated with anti-authoritarian or non-conformist tendencieds, 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 with critically-acclaimed exhibitions across China, North America and Europe as an ‘artist to watch’.
