Mouse Droppings 1
Zhao Zhao
赵赵
Production date
2010
Object Detail
Media
oil on canvas
Measurements
200 x 200 cm
Notes
Mouse Droppings 1 is from an ongoing series of works begun in 2009. Large, apparently abstract canvases are covered with tiny dots, dashes and flecks of black and coloured paint inspired by the pattern of mouse droppings on the floor of Zhao Zhao’s old studio: he describes collecting exactly 5,113 pieces of mouse excrement from underneath his bed when he moved out. Despite his initial disgust, he came to think the droppings were signs of individual lives taking place in the darkest corners, and thus worthy of respect. From a distance many works in the series appear monochrome; only on closer inspection is the hectic variety of Zhao’s tiny, carefully painted marks revealed. Critic Michael Young, writing in Art Asia Pacific magazine in 2015, interpreted these paintings as a reflection on the conflict in China between homogeneity and individualism. Like Ai Weiwei’s one hundred million apparently identical porcelain sunflower seeds exhibited in the Tate Modern Turbine Hall, these paintings may be interpreted as a response to a society emerging from enforced collectivism: thousands of tiny paint marks may seem to be the same, but they are, actually, all quite different.
Despite Zhao’s insistence that these are not abstract paintings, Mouse Droppings 1 may also be read as a riff on western Post-Painterly Abstraction – a jokey reinterpretation of mid-twentieth century paintings reflecting on how western conventions came to dominate Chinese avant-garde art in the 1980s and 1990s. By replacing fields of pure colour and form with a reference to humble mouse excrement, the ‘high’ art credentials of modernist abstraction, and the relationship between art and real life, are called into question.
Despite Zhao’s insistence that these are not abstract paintings, Mouse Droppings 1 may also be read as a riff on western Post-Painterly Abstraction – a jokey reinterpretation of mid-twentieth century paintings reflecting on how western conventions came to dominate Chinese avant-garde art in the 1980s and 1990s. By replacing fields of pure colour and form with a reference to humble mouse excrement, the ‘high’ art credentials of modernist abstraction, and the relationship between art and real life, are called into question.
Accession number
2013.087