Wonder-20150908
Zhao Yao
赵要
Production date
2015
Object Detail
Media
wool, nylon
Measurements
215 x 230 x 64 cm
Notes
Zhao Yao says that audiences have just one very simple decision to make about his work: do they like it or dislike it? A conceptual artist who loves puzzles, brainteasers and mazes, he has made a practice of painting abstract, geometric works on unusual materials including plywood and printed, woven cloth. Here he has replicated aerial views of Chinese airports – a symbol of the nation’s breakneck pace of modernisation – onto commercial carpet. Airports are among the strangest and most artificial places in the modern world. They are landscapes of waiting: acres of carpeting, mountains of plastic, and an intoxicating – and toxic – atmosphere of jet fuel. Zhao Yao’s representation of a liminal, in-between place reminds us that Chinese artists inhabit a globalised world of porous borders and instant communication. Airports, he says, represent the struggle between modernity and nature.
Accession number
2016.033