Zhao Gang

Zhao was a member of the controversial, avant-garde Stars Group that exhibited in Beijing in the 1970s, when the artist was just a teenager. In the course of a life as a wanderer, Zhao has been an artist, financier, and publisher of ArtAsiaPacific. He left China early in search of the wider world: in 1983 he moved to the West, and didn’t come back until 2007. Since his return, he has been building a distinctive hybrid practice of painterly meditation on the Chinese past. The artist continued his practice towards the more personal, one that revolved around his specific identity, but that stretched back towards history to question the present, drawing from erotica, revolution, poetry, traditional ink painting, Chinese culture’s past. In this way, through the personal, Zhao depicts a new Chinese imaginary, explored through painting, about painting, and about himself.

Zhao Gang currently lives and works in New York, Beijing, and Taipei. His selected museum solo exhibitions include: ”Nothing is Happening,” Long Museum Chong Qing, Chongqing, China (2022), ”Zhao Gang: Domestic Anxiety,” Long Museum, Shanghai, China (2021), The Road to Serfdom II, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Santiago, Chile (2016). His selected group exhibitions include: Individuals, Networks, Expressions, M Plus Museum, Hong Kong, China (2023); A Leisurely Stroll: The Tenth Anniversary of the Long Museum, Long Museum, Shanghai, China (2023); “Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World,” Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, USA (2017). He participated in important biennial/triennial exhibitions such as Guangzhou Triennial, 2008; PERFORMA 07, New York; and Yokohama Triennial, 2005.

Courtesy Each Modern