Zhou Tao (周滔)

Biography

Born in 1976, in Changsha, China;
Currently works and lives in Guangzhou.

Biography

Born in 1976, in Changsha, China;
Currently works and lives in Guangzhou.

Education

2006 MA of Mixed Media Study, Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts
2001 BFA of Oil Painting, Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts

Prize

2015 1st Prize of the Jury of the Ministry, 61st Oberhausen Internation Short Film Festival
2013 1st Han Nefkens Foundation BACC Award for Contemporary Art in Asia

Grant

2009 Grantee of Asian Cultural Council fellowship

Residency Program

2013-2014 Residency program- Bangkok Art and Cultural Centre (BACC)
2012-2013 Residency program - Kadist Art Foundation in Paris
2009-2010 Artist in Residence at Location One, New York

Solo Project

2014
Green Sun, an exhibition by Zhou Tao, Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, Bangkok, Thailand

2013
The Training, Kadist Art Foundation, Paris, France

2012
Zhou Tao, A Window to the World, Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art
Zhou Tao, Collector, TPW gallery, Toronto, Canada
Open Studio: Seek for Geothermal Heat, Times Musuem, Guangzhou, China

2011
The Man who Plants Scenarios, Queens Nails Projects, San Francisco, CA, U.S.A.

2009
1, 2, 3, 4-, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge MA, U.S.A.

Screening

2015
International-competition 10, 61st Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, Oberhausen, Germany
My Camera Doesn’t Lie? Documentary Aesthetics in East Asia, initiated by the Department of Art History of Columbia University, co-organized by AAA in America, New York, U.S.A.

Selected Group Exhibition

2017
Viva Arte Viva, 57th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy
Sharjah Biennial 13: Tamawuj, Art Spaces Al Mureijah 1, Sharjah, U.A.E.

2016
Tales of Our Time, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, U.S.A.
Garden in Movement - 8th Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Vision, Tokyo
Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo, Japan
The Collection, A selection of Chinese works, Foundation Louis Vuitton, Paris, France
South by Southeast. A Further Surface, Guangdong Times Museum, Guangzhou, China

2015
New Directors/New Films 2015, MoMA & the Film Society of Lincoln Center, New York, U.S.A.
System of a Down, Ellis King Gallery, Dublin, Ireland

2014
Landscape: The Virtual The Actual The Possible?, Guangdong Times Museum, Guangzhou, China; Yerba Buena
Center for the Arts, San Francisco, U.S.A.
The 8 of Paths: Art in Beijing - Art exhibition in the Uferhallen, Uferstrasse 8, Berlin, Germany

2013
The 5th Auckland Triennial: If you were to live here……, Auckland, New Zealand

2012
On/ Off, Showcases China's young artists, UCCA, Beijing, China
Special Program at ART Tokyo 2012, Tokyo, Japan

2011
Body Talks, Video Art In Public Space, Maastricht, The Netherlands
Beyond the Crisis, 6th Curitiba Biennial, Curitiba, Brazil
Art Nova, Art Basel Miami Beach, Vitamin Creative Space, U.S.A.
Moving Image in China, 1988-2011, Mingsheng Art Musuem, Shanghai, China
Support > System, Luckman Fine Arts Complex, Los Angeles, CA, U.S.A.
Exhibition, TaiKang Art Space, Beijing, China

2010
Non-Aligned, Two Artist, Marina Abramovic Institute West, San Francisco
Yes, But—, Location One, New York, U.S.A.

2009
Dress Codes, Third ICP Triennial of Photography and Video, International Center of Photography, New York, U.S.A.
Double Happiness, Leonhardi Kulturprojekte, Frankfurt, Germany
The Big World: Recent Art from China, Chicago Cultural Center, U.S.A.
Portrait of Self-Exile, Vitamin art space and the Shop, Beijing, China
Louis Vuitton: A Passion for Creation, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong, China
Species of Spaces, Art 40 Basel, Basel, Switzerland
Cantocore: Free On Board, Mission 17 Gallery, San Francisco, U.S

2008
Trans local motion, 7th Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai, China
China Power Station Part III, MUDAM: Musée d'Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg
Depart-Guangdong Hong Kong Macau, He Xiang Ning Art Museum & OCAT, Shenzhen, China
Guangzhou Station - Special Exhibition Contemporary Art Of Guangdong, Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou,
China
Cantocore: Import/Export, Ping Pong Space, Guangzhou, China

2007
China Power Station part II, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, Norway
Changes - video art from China, Northern Territory Centre for Contemporary Art, Australia
Square Box, Art Beijing Platform, Beijing, China

2006
La rivoluzione siamo noi, Isola d'Arte, Milano, Italy
Accumulation-Canton Express the Next Stop, Tang Contemporary Art Center, Beijing, China
Octomania (On drawing the number eight), Para/Site Art Space, Hong Kong, China
Asia-Pacific Documentary Film Festival, Asia-Australia Arts Center, Sydney, Australia
Diversion: Exhibition by New Generation, Times Museum (a member of GDMoA), Guangzhou, China

2005
Archaeology of the future, The Second Triennial of Chinese Art, The Nanjing Museum, Nanjing, China
Contemporary art in Guangdong, He Xiang Ning Art Museum, Shenzhen, China
Feng Jian, Special Plan for Second Guangzhou Triennial, Borges Libreria Art Space Trust, Guangzhou, China

2004
Fei, Fei, Fei, Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai, China
Open Attitude - The First Generation of Artists In a New Era, Guangdong Museum of art, Guangzhou, China

2003
White Tower Mountain, Contemporary Art Exhibition, Baita Ling, Hangzhou, China
Nasty , Shanghai Biz-Art Art Center, Shanghai, China
Exciting day, Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, China

more >>

News

M+ Screenings: City Limits to explore urbanisation in Asia this August
4 — 6 Aug 2017
Broadway Cinematheque in Yau Ma Tei, Hong Kong

Viva Arte Viva - 57th International Art Exhibition
13 May — 26 Nov 2017
57th La Biennale di Venezia, Venice

Sharjah Biennial 13: Tamawuj
10 Mar — 12 Jun 2017
Art Spaces Al Mureijah 1, Sharjah

more >>

Reflection

Blue&Redvideostill01 Video still from Blue and Red (2014)

Reflection

Sometime, when you observe the surroundings and people around you in detail, you will capture those hidden traces that connect with your inner heart. During these moments, you will forget the existence of the physicality of yourself or the subject; only feelings and ideas are flowing. This is precisely the starting point of a fiction. You are the audience. The existence is objectified and becomes a film or a play. This is my description of the perceptive relations. I don’t want it to be considered as merely a viewing concept.

- Zhou Tao

I experienced a certain moment. I found the same experience in Zhou Tao’s videos Collect or After Reality. The videos offer something far more complicated than what I had experienced in reality, yet I can only use myself as a medium through which to describe these works. In this time-space that is not “either-or” but “both-and”, it allows us to create and enter with our own ways. In the “moments” that we have, time is never cut. Therefore, my experience may just set the “depth of field” for viewing Zhou’s videos. When “we” long to surpass the limited time of our existence, our experiences will start to interact with this world.

We are travelling, not through images, but within a “volume of time”. It is only when the threads hidden within time link with our perceptions, at “that moment”, that existence can be revealed. This is why Zhou Tao does not perform (when you perform, you will be blocked by your own performance), but rather he moves. He moves, seemingly unaware of his own movements, as one “does not enter into communication with the outside world except unawares.”¹ He does so in order to throw himself to this vast field of the world, to follow the footsteps of fate, to wait, to urge for the “revealing” of an invisible existence. But to reveal is not the goal. To reveal, but what for? If revealing equals to intervening and distorting the “shelter” where “existence” hides, all it will reflect will merely be our own confusion and desire. After all, since existence is invisible and silenct, humans have to step forwards, transforming their own selves as the media with which to test its depth. Perhaps it is this “moment of unawares” that makes the elegance of human action possible.

- Excerpts from Hu Fang A Place Where the Spirits Rest, appeared on Zhou Tao: The Man Who Eats Pigeons, published by Kadist Art Foundation, Paris, 2013

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¹ Robert Bresson, Notes on Cinematography, translated by Jonathan Griffin, Urizen Books, New York, p 51

(All images: Courtesy the artist and Vitamin Creative Space, Text: Vitamin Archive)