Tang Contemporary Art is pleased to announce artist Zhao Zhao’s latest solo exhibition “Antiquity” from October 25th to December 10th, 2025 at its Beijing 1st Space. The exhibition, curated by Cui Cancan presents Zhao Zhao's two new series, "Antiquity" and "Sky Fire," created in 2025.

 

In Zhao Zhao’s works, I always glimpse a world that evokes “Antiquity”—a realm as vast and cinematic as a Western epic, where heaven and earth have aged together through endless time. Here, the crust of the world has folded upon itself: seabeds from tens of millions of years ago intertwine with today’s desolate deserts and barren Gobi plains. In Zhao Zhao’s Western tale, nature is not alone; history itself hums beneath it—a ballad of humanity’s struggle to conquer nature and to wrestle with civilization. Within this vast expanse, the birth of the cosmos, the rise and fall of faiths, the collisions between nomadic and industrial civilizations all converge and blur, interwoven with the artist’s own childhood memories, the legacy of his forebears, ancient legends, and the inevitable cycles of glory, loss, and remorse before nature.

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“Antiquity” is not only the title of the exhibition but also the most distinctive mark of Zhao Zhao’s artistic language. This embodies his unique conception of time and space. Unlike art that dwells solely in the present, Zhao Zhao’s work is threaded through with the long fabric of human civilization: the histories of the Taklamakan Desert, the vistas of the Gobi, the fields of cotton spread across distant mountains, the totems of Central Asian cultures, the clay vessels of the Hongshan period, the Buddhist sculptures of the Tang dynasty, and the components of modern industry. These relics from disparate eras and realms, and the languages and histories they carry, together form the poetic syntax of Zhao Zhao’s art.

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The exhibition Antiquity traces a journey that is shorter in time but vast in its implications. Since 2020, Zhao Zhao has been using cotton as his medium. His first work, a white garden, unveils cotton’s long and entangled history with the Western frontier. Later, through the technique of hot stamping, he transformed cotton from a regional narrative into a universal emblem—into the black geometry of the square, the ladder to the heavens, the swastika, and the Suprematist circle. In his 2022 work A Long Day, cotton became a measure of time itself, embodying the two twelve-hour spans of a single day.

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By 2025, Zhao Zhao returned to the birthplace of cotton. On a stretch of Gobi wasteland, he used a convex lens to concentrate sunlight and set cotton aflame, naming the work Sky Fire. Its appearance marked a new understanding of his cotton series and illuminated the passage from disenchantment to re-enchantment within Antiquity—not as a historical period, but as a realm where the ancient and the eternal intertwine. Throughout human history, science has sought to interpret the antiquity. Knowledge and reason stripped it of its mystery, rendering it no longer a domain of uncontrollable forces. Humanity once believed itself the master of nature and time—until the advance of modern science revealed that the more we understand, the deeper the unknown becomes, and with it arises the crisis of existence. When sky fire begins to burn, it feels like a reversal of human history itself: the power of humankind retreats, nature regains its spell, and cotton ceases to be mere matter and returns to the essence of nature. Time folds back toward antiquity, and the world once again becomes raw, unknowable, and brimming with life.

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Perhaps, within Zhao Zhao’s artistic cosmos, two kinds of time have always coexisted. One is the time presumed by the idea of progress—a linear time in which antiquity stands as the point of human origin and civilization evolves through successive iterations. From the ancient landscapes of the Taklamakan Desert to the rise of nomadic peoples and onward to the transformations of modern industrial civilization, Zhao aligns these epochs with the ancient, modern, and contemporary, using them to explore the ebb and flow of human civilization—its advances, regressions, and the fragile balance between the two.

One is the time of nature—cyclical, unhurried, and free of hierarchy—like the rhythm of day and night or the turning of the seasons. It knows neither progress nor decline, nor advancement nor loss of value. It is like Zhao Zhao’s moments of solitude on the Gobi, where time no longer connects to the human narrative of history but stands still between him and the vastness of nature. In that isolation, he is free to feel the wind in motion and the searing blaze of sunlight. Then, at the moment when the sun stands overhead, he draws down sky fire—to burn away memory and ignite the traces of childhood.

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Antiquity and Sky Fire

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Approximately a year ago, Zhao Zhao began yet another journey in the Gobi. Perhaps because he was born there, his perception of nature and the cosmos carries a particular intimacy. The desert, barren plains, poplar groves, and solitary stones scattered across the wilderness of his distant homeland have always been wellsprings of inspiration for him.

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However, unlike his previous journeys, this one had no fixed destination and followed no strict route. This sense of looseness lightens the weight of work and purpose, allowing for a deeper, more personal connection with nature. As the car drifted freely across the desolate expanse, his gaze moved with the shifting landscape; in that mental clearing, the tensions of modern life and the clutter of old thoughts quietly dissolved. At such moments, one’s attention belongs solely to nature—the sunlight grows hotter, almost blinding, and the once monotonous stones and sand begin to reveal infinite variation. From this openness, ideas that could never have surfaced in the city emerge, clear and unbidden.

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It was during this journey that Zhao Zhao first felt the impulse to paint the grandeur of nature—to capture the “desert” and the “foliage,” subjects rarely seen in his previous work but deeply familiar to him. However, amidst the shifting dunes, plein air painting proved nearly impossible, and relying solely on photographs seemed to strip away the immediacy of being there. Months later, Zhao Zhao discovered a method that lay somewhere between travel, field study, sketching, imitation, and imagination. First, unlike the static landscapes of traditional painting, his aim was to depict motion—to grasp the desert in its most natural, primordial state: the ceaseless assault of sandstorms, the flow and surge of grains in flight, and the hidden whirlpools of energy within movement itself. Second, these ancient forces, unchanged by human hands over tens of millennia, must be rendered in a language as ancient as themselves. Drawing upon the zigzag motifs found on pottery from the Hongshan culture, he used the “Z”-shaped pattern as both a line and structure, infusing the desert with its own rhythm of life and approaching the sense of absolute power that nature embodies.

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At times, this expressionist approach to the desert’s spirit unexpectedly edged close to topographic realism, so that the abstract and the physical converged. From this experience arose a new idea: Zhao Zhao sought to once again harness the forces of antiquity in his ongoing Cotton series, which he began in 2020. Months later, he returned to the Gobi, carrying cotton once more. Using a convex lens to draw down sunlight, he summoned sky fire upon the desolate plain, capturing a vision that felt like a myth from the dawn of time. In this story, night, noon, and sunset unfold in slow succession; the flame no longer comes from humankind but from the ancient sun itself—like Prometheus stealing fire in Greek mythology or Yan Bo guarding the flame in an ancient Chinese legend. Through this act, Zhao Zhao invokes both the history of nature and humanity and a spirit inherited from antiquity: reverence for the land and all living things, a return to the spiritual origins of humankind, and a meditation on how the borrowing of fire has shaped the path that brought us to the present.

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When cotton ignites upon the barren Gobi plain, it is freed from the current of time—released from the weight of history and restored to its place among species and the long continuum of nature. Its once-contemporary symbolism dissolves into something more ancient and elemental—a revelation from antiquity itself. Between heaven and earth, the individual’s pursuit of certainty wavers, fragile and unsteady, rendered small and transient against the vast expanse of geological time. The film concludes with an image steeped in quiet philosophy: a figure walking steadily toward the setting sun. Where is this journey leading—to the future or the past? What lies ahead on that path? As the sun sinks and darkness gathers, the Gobi is cloaked in poetry. The stories of humankind, from antiquity to the present, are but a fleeting glimmer in the endless river of stars.

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In Zhao Zhao’s work, “fire” and “nature” have special significance. Fire is both a tool and medium—a process of creation that embraces accident—and at the same time a central motif and spiritual emblem. On one wall of the exhibition space, the earliest oracle bone character for “fire” recalls its ancient place within Chinese civilization. On the opposite wall, a poem in praise of nature speaks of the turning of the seasons and the equality of all living things, offering quiet wisdom on the rhythm of existence.

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At the center of the gallery stands a vast platform of bluestone pebbles, resembling an altar of history—or perhaps the remnants of antiquity itself—evoking the intertwined fates of “fire” and “nature.” Upon this surface lies a pit for fire, branches gathered from the Gobi, and a convex lens that once drew down the “Sky Fire.” These elements guide us back to the artist’s solitary moments during his travels: in those desolate nights, a small campfire stirred a sense of awe before nature; the burdens and anxieties of life fell away, and in that flickering light, he felt a rare and absolute freedom…

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The Chapter of Fire

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Does fire continue to shape our lives today? Did you prepare a warm breakfast this morning? Have you ever traveled in a vehicle driven by an internal combustion engine? The glass, ceramics, and wrought iron objects in your home—what temperatures brought them into being? As autumn’s chill approaches, do you long for the early arrival of heat and the comfort of fire’s warmth? Or perhaps, wandering through a gallery in 798, you catch sight—almost by accident—of a fire extinguisher, a quiet reminder of the latent danger of fire. If you have encountered any of these, you are already intimately bound to the world of fire.

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Zhao Zhao gathers a constellation of objects that trace our relationship with fire. Yet, unlike the flames of our daily life, his focus reaches further back—to the origin of fire in human civilization, its natural essence, and the solemn history of fire as both a tool and a driving force of technology.

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The discovery and mastery of fire was not a single moment but a long process. In the beginning, humans encountered “sky fire” by chance: molten rock flowing from volcanoes, trees struck by lightning, and dry grass igniting in extreme heat. These fires were accidental and seasonal. Civilization began only when humans learned to intentionally preserve the flame. By striking stones together, people discovered that certain metal-bearing rocks could produce sparks; thus, flint emerged from the countless stones. By rubbing wood against wood, they grasped the principle of friction, eventually leading to the invention of matches and, later, the modern lighter. Aligned neatly in the glass case—a row of marble lighters, matches, gunpowder, flint, and convex lenses—Zhao Zhao presents a concise chronicle of this long history: the transformation of fire from a chance encounter into an instrument and from a natural phenomenon into the foundation of human progress.

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With the birth of the earliest tools, human productivity increased. From the moment we bid farewell to raw meat, humankind began its journey from mere survival toward “a better life.” The prehistoric pottery and clay vessels displayed here—each fired by flames —revolutionized how people cooked and stored food. Among them, a clay figurine records a turning point in the nature of objects: they cease to be mere instruments of survival and begin to embody the will to live. By the time of the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties, this will to survive evolved into symbols of aesthetics, belief, and morality. Through repeated tempering and mastery of fire, at temperatures between 1,100 and 1,200°C, the bronze jue cup was born. It marked not only a triumph of craftsmanship but also the ritualization of power, signifying that ancient China had entered a new social structure and civilization.

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However, technological progress does not always advance civilization. History inevitably turns back on itself. A deliberately placed bronze coin inscribed with “Deyi Yuanbao” points us to a historical paradox. In 755 CE, during the fourteenth year of the Tang emperor Xuanzong’s Tianbao reign, the An Lushan Rebellion broke out. Four years later, the rebel general Shi Siming usurped the regime established by An Lushan, proclaimed himself Emperor of Great Yan in Fanyang, and, to consolidate his rule, ordered the melting of countless bronze Buddha statues from Luoyang to mint these coins. Once sacred emblems of civilization, the Buddha images were returned by fire to their primal material form—their symbolism transformed into tokens of power and the spoils of dynastic struggle. Nearby, raw copper ore and a meteorite further reveal Zhao Zhao’s perspective: beyond the linear narrative of human progress lies the mystery, transcendence, and the unfathomable power of nature itself. “Heavenly fire” was the beginning—and remains the spiritual horizon toward which Zhao Zhao’s work continues to reach.

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Mastery over fire also heralds the possibility of losing control over it. Zhao Zhao deliberately places in the display case a piece of Jian ware from the Northern Song dynasty, whose surface bears the traces of “Yao Bian”—the spontaneous kiln transmutation that occurs during firing. The unpredictable crackles and iridescent glaze, impossible to replicate, give rise to beauty born of chance. This echoes the Daoist notion of “following the way of nature”: when a thing transcends human imagination and technical intention, it attains the revered state of “Tiangong Kaiwu”—the craftsmanship of heaven.

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In many ways, the enigmatic beauty of these heaven-wrought objects, set against the story of technological advancement and humanity’s drive to “master nature,” shapes Zhao’s distinctive artistic approach. Drawing on the methods of natural history and archaeology, he meticulously arranges, classifies, and juxtaposes artifacts from diverse civilizations, recombining them in inventive ways to forge fresh, imaginative interpretations of history.

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Text：Cui Cancan

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