NAN KE GALLERY is pleased to announce that it will be co-representing the artistic legacy of artist Hao Zhou with MUD Gallery, and will present a solo exhibition program of the artist from December 14, 2024 to January 14, 2025 at MUD Gallery. Born in Shanghai in 1960, Hao Zhou passed away in 2023 and lived in Shanghai and Yokohama. From 1993 to 2023, he held over 70 solo exhibitions in Tokyo, Osaka, Hong Kong, and Shanghai, and lived permanently in Shanghai and Yokohama.Art museum and institutional collections include: Smith College Museum of Art, Portland Art Museum, Boston Museum of Art, Kracow National Museum, and Norway Center of International Graphic Work etc.
Hao Zhou
O.130884-8, 2013
Oil on canvas
65 x 53 cm
© Courtesy of the artist
For artist Hao Zhou, absolute silence is an unbearable thing. "City is my original nature," he described in a dialogue with Southern Metropolis Daily in 2020. The rhythm of machinery, the crumbs of concrete, the sound of traffic and footsteps, these urban edges are broken up into basic elements in his life, forming his own nature of the wind, fire, forest and trees.
Hao Zhou
O.140584-20, 2014
Oil on Canvas
65 x 53 cm
© Courtesy of the artist
It is in the city that he forms his first encounters with the world. The sound of cars, horses, people, brickwork and gables, the traces of man-made objects and their irregular noises form the basic unit of his life. With these bricks and stones, he travelled to Tokyo to study oil painting and printmaking at Musashino Art University. The ukiyo-e (traditional Japanese printmaking), which is used to express the undercurrent of calmness underneath the surface with fine and delicate craftsmanship, is a source of water that has been poured into his creations.
Hao Zhou
O.1705100-16, 2017
Oil on Canvas
47 x 88 cm
© Courtesy of the artist
In 1983, Hao Zhou went to Japan to study and graduated from the Oil Painting Department of Musashino Art University in 1988. As the handmade rituals of painting materials are piled up, what is being explored seems to be the essence of human industry, and the thousands of divine thoughts hidden behind its cold exterior. This traditional aesthetic paradigm originated from Japan, passing through the soft face of Chikanobu, the moonlight on the lake surface extended and lengthened by the Shoda, the scattered snowflakes hidden behind the sharp crane beak of Ohara Koson, and travelling to Hao's layers of restrained strokes, attempts to explain the nature of the industry, the city, and eventually the possibility of human beings, the delightful silence and loneliness that lurks beneath the noisy surface.
Hao Zhou in the studio © Courtesy of the artist and MUD Gallery Photo by Zixuan Wang
"City is my original nature."
Text by Roxane Fu
December 15, 2024
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