Zhou Zhou's（b.1987, China) paintings respond to the collective disorder and the perceptual predicament of the individual deeply engulfed in the formation of the current Chinese 'Spectacle Society' (Guy Debord). At the peak of the accumulation of this complicated 'landscape': people's lives are dominated by the visual communication mechanism, and hot events manipulate our emotions and thoughts.
Read MoreZhou chooses the unique miniature landscape visual language of traditional Chinese painting to construct the painting, expressing the performative nature of the landscape and the alienation state of the people in it. The characters in the image are placed in a highly uncomfortable environments with slightly distorted postures, like trapped animals, but they are generally unaware of their situation.
In Zhou's most representative series, she introduces embroidery and collage of three-dimensional fabrics to her two-dimensional paintings, creating a visual language that can activate synaesthesia. The texture of embroidery complements the tactile sensation that brushes cannot reach. which largely extends the content of the painting. The embroidery thread's lustre gives people a gorgeous visual association. In contrast, the exposed thread and pins give the work a sense of decadence, showing a sense of crisis surging under the lively landscape.
Zhou compares her work to that of a director. Those materials are on the stage she designs, telling half-fictional real stories and half-real fictional stories, and it's all up to the audience to distinguish between true and false.
Text courtesy Studio Gallery.
