Don't trust me: Zhao Yao

You Can't See Me, You Can't See Me is on at the Beijing Commune from June 12 until August 12

Back in 2008, when firereworks rained down upon the Beijing Olympics and affirmed China’s status as a rising global power, Zhao Yao produced the video piece ‘I Love Beijing 999’. Made from more than 30,000 still photographs, each featured the Beijing cityscape with the sun at its centre.

‘I didn’t have much to do at the time, so I spent around 200 days hopping onto buses,’ recalls Zhao. ‘I must have criss-crossed the city on nearly every bus route in Beijing.’ The images were all taken from bus windows, and are a journey through the city in space and time, taking viewers through the deep, dry winter with its pale, hard-blue skies and faraway sun to the melting summer of the capital’s Olympic heyday.

That work’s beauty and symmetry stands in stark contrast to the pieces now littering his studio. Made from flat wooden boards slotted together like paper cut-outs, crooked paint-sculptures – covered in gunk-like masses of acrylic, wire and other materials – lie among keyless keyboards, an electric saw, assorted spray cans and other evidence of Zhao’s recent endeavours. In places, edges of the sculptures are cut into a close pattern of spikes, reminiscent of a digital sound wave.

Each hails from Zhao’s 2011 solo exhibition, I Am Your Night. Drawing upon his training in graphic design, they have been labelled ‘ugly’ by some critics. Others say that they’re a conceptual tease aimed squarely at the art world eyeballing them. However, with a new exhibition in the offing this month, these are perhaps the best clues as to the contents of a show that the artist is keeping very quiet about.

Hailing from Sichuan, Zhao is now just over 30. He finally secured the attention of the art world in 2011, but his work had been evolving over the past five years. ‘I gradually realised I had been informing people about what is so-called “good art”. I had been providing them with a kind of belief about my art. But I soon came to see that this was pointless.’

He compares the change to quitting smoking, working up to a seemingly decisive break with previous concerns to create a more conceptual approach. As part of his newfound focus, he intends to force the audience out of their comfort zone; he wants to prompt viewers into thinking of new ways to revisit the question: ‘What is art?’

As a result, Zhao’s works are ‘no longer concerned with making something that is simply interesting in itself,’ he says. ‘They are informed by observations of what others are looking at, and how they are looking.’

At his studio in Heiqiao, he is working on a painting. Instead of canvas, a wooden frame is wrapped in mass-produced gingham and shows a strong likeness to ‘A Painting of Thought I-10’ (2011), from his previous exhibition. He shows me images of tall sculptures being finished at another space, also similar to those from I Am Your Night.

As we stand over this new, as yet unnamed, piece, he explains: ‘These pictures are imaginative. At the same time they are ready-made, taken from a series used to train kids to think logically; things like colour patterns and exercises to teach them to move shapes around and form a new design. By integrating these lessons with the mass-produced cloth, these appear as abstract works of art.’ Before adding: ‘It’s a bit of a joke because this piece is in itself a very superficial piece of art.’

Arguably, the new exhibition is targeted at people who pay close attention to the art scene. ‘It’s built on the foundations of I Am Your Night, but will alter certain impressions made upon people by some of the pieces,’ he hints, cagey about divulging too much. Most of all, he wants the exhibition to have an element of surprise.

‘I like it more when the audience doesn’t trust the artist’s perspective, when the artist doesn’t trust himself and when the audience doesn’t even trust itself.’ Playing games helps Zhao dodge expectations – as well as questions – but if he wants to convey one thing, he reminds me, it’s this: ‘Don’t trust me; don’t trust anything.’ We believe him. Clare Pennington

Originally posted in Time Out Beijing