Hong Hao

2013.03.16 – 2013.04.27

798 Art District, No。2 Jiuxianqiao Road, ChaoyangDistrict, Beijing

AfterLunar New Year, Pace Beijing will present the solo exhibition of Hong Hao, therenowned contemporary Chinese artist who is newly represented by Pace. Theexhibition is a comprehensively retrospective of the artist's works fromvarious periods of his career, as well as new works. This exhibition will alsobe the first public show of his 2013 series Reciprocatingsince Hong Hao’s solo exhibition As It Is in 2011.

Hong Hao questions andcriticizes the survival in reality in his unique satire and parody style, andhe also discusses aesthetics by using ahighly representative language, which is based on histalent of using various media and his creational methods with oriental origins. The exhibition willlast from 16March to 27April.

The new series Reciprocating extends from Hong Hao’sprevious concept of making art by scanning, which preserves the original shapeof the material. After procedures such as collecting, limning, scanning andpainting after print, HongHao’s artwork breaks the traditional rules of production and techniques, andalso passes the boundary of media. Besides, after removing from the functionaland commercial impact which comes from public opinions in a logic way, hisartwork returns to the thinking of pure aesthetics, and blur the physical formof certain objects but focus on the archetype. Hong Hao’s work shows both thespatial relationship between different objects after dematerialization and theartist’s will, which returns to the very early stage that is pure and simpleafter experiencing the reality, but obtaining more wisdom than the verybeginning that is refined from the experience.

Videos will also be included in the exhibition, includingTaichi, arecording of the process that the artist practicesTaichi every day.Shot fromdifferent perspective, it conveys the awareness of therelationship between the human being and his surroundings, and through theself-reflection over survival and daily maintaining, to represent theimplications of achieving the ultimate truth via invisible presence.

The exhibition will also include the past important works of Hong Hao,which reflects the featured characteristics of the artist. Hong Hao has verydeep understanding of the process of experience. In his late80s work SelectedScriptures, HongHao made screen printing in the form of antique books. He rearranged theexisting territory of different nations by containing languages and marks ofsocial consuming as well as public commercial media to eliminate the clashbetween different cultures and merge the worldwideculture and history.

The series of Elegant Gathering (2007) is the irony representation of the public place where audience tends totalk with others instead of appreciating art. The artwork also shows that theartist imposes his bold humor onto the ruthless analysis of the art world,especially the position of an individual in a self-inferential and narcissisticworld.Hong Hao used to study history and antique booksin the 1990s. From 1997, he began taking photographs that are irony andself-reflecting.In2001 HongHao began the series of My Things in which he displayed his objectsafter scanning them, to show his living situation through daily consumption. He has discovered auniversal space among arrangement, transformation and repentance whendisplaying his objects. The arrangement is a very complex combination thatenforces the impression of the survival and rhythm of life in the reality, andtransforms the living situation and the desire of consuming in contemporaryChina into graphics. In his 2008 series Bottom,Hong Hao scanned his objects in various angles. Therefore, the final look ofthis series is following the natural trend rather than in a pre-set situation. In another work, Hong Hao collected many redheader documents and food tickets to create a collage that comment on the sense of authorityamong hierarchy in Chinese cultural context to show the relationship of humanityin people’s daily life.

Biography of Hong Hao

Best-known for his print and photography works, Hong Hao (b.1965, Beijing, China) graduated from the Printmaking Department of the CentralAcademy of Fine Arts, Beijing in 1989. The artist currently lives and works inBeijing.

Much of Hong Hao’s work features assembled scanned images ofvarious found objects including maps, books, tickets, receipts, banknotes,food, and containers. In his 2009 solo exhibition “Hong Hao: Bottom" atBeijing Commune, the artist exhibited a series that features the bottom half ofeveryday objects. By arranging the scanned images according to their forms andcolors, he destructs the functional property of the materials and reproduces anundifferentiated, flattened, deliberately superficial world of aesthetics. WhileHong Hao continues to work with found objects, ”AS IT IS,” his recent soloexhibition at Beijing Commune, deals with the physical forms in a morestraightforward manner, creating an interesting dialectic development of boththe vocabulary and concept of his art.

Hong Hao’s work has been exhibited widely since the 1990s,including solo exhibitions at Chambers Fine Art, New York (2004 and 2007) andRencontres d'Arles, Arles, France (2003). He has also participated ininternational group exhibitions such as “Between Here and There: Passages inContemporary Photography” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2010);“Book/Shelf” at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2008); and "Zoominginto Focus: Contemporary Chinese Photography and Video", shown at the SanDiego Museum of Art, USA, Shanghai Art Museum, and the National Art Museum ofChina (2004-2005). Work by Hong Hao was also recently included in the groupshow “The Global Contemporary: Art Worlds after 1989” at ZKM (Museum ofContenporary Art) in Karlsruhe, Germany. Hong Hao’s work is included innumerous public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; theBritish Museum; Museum Of Fine Arts, Boston; the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum,Japan; the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; and the Ullens Center forContemporary Art, Beijing, among others.

For further information,please contact with pr@pacebeijing.com /+86 10 5978.9781.