Photo by Li Qi
i Zhou is a young Chinese artist who has lived in Rome from the age of ten and studied between London and Paris with degrees in Political Science and Economics. She is a polyglot artist who’s just celebrated her 10-year career and whose work has been shown at the Shanghai Biennale, the Venice Biennale and the Sundance Film Festival.
Yi Zhou was named as the first ever artist-ambassador to endorse a beauty brand; Clarins, from 2010 to 2011. Loved by luxury brands for her multi-disciplinary range as an artist, since 2012 she has also started collaborations with brands such as Italian luxury eyewear brand, Persol, for which she directed a much hyped short film and was simultaneously selected to be featured in their print ad campaign. Moreover, she has also completed a new project entitled "Interactive lives" commissioned by Italian luxury brand, Hogan.
Her range and interests have also been shown through her much-acclaimed collaboration with the French couture jewelry house Gripoix; a first successful artist-collection entitled "Pineapple's Secret".
Since 2010 she has relocated back to China and founded her studio and production company in Shanghai, creating job opportunities for young Chinese people to work and experiment together on international projects. An image maker and muse, switching from the front to the back of the camera, Yi Zhou is a modern-day Chinese Hitchcock, Yoko Ono and Cindy Sherman. Currently, Yi Zhou is also Tudou.com’s (Chinese would-be youtube) art-director and serves as art and fashion advisory member at Sina.com (which owns Chinese twitter).
If Yi Zhou's work is not pop, the life she has been embracing reminds of Andy Warhol's philosophy: establishing her work as leading video artist, ranging her works to sculptures, music composition, filmmaking, acting as active promoter of East meets West culture at key leading events such as TEDx and Women's Forum. Like Andy Warhol at his time, her work is also recognized by members of highly diverse social circles such as distinguished intellectuals, Hollywood celebrities and wealthy patrons and young social media audience.
ARTIST STATEMENT:
About the idea of being a multimedia artist:
We are living in a multimedia world with machines, smart phones, and software that are converging at a dizzying speed. Yi Zhou believes that human beings and artists should combine their multifarious capabilities, and so works in many different mediums.
1. The work is about the Construction, deconstruction, disintegration, re-creation, transformation and the reification of simultaneous and parallel worlds.
2. The New worlds are a synthesis of the ancient, the present, the imaginary and the sub-conscious world of dreams
3. The vision that inhabits the work is expressed through the layering of all kinds of media; everyone is subject, from the obscure to the infamous. Its content is both the sum and the detail of human activity.
November 27, 2012
La Gaité Lyrique, Paris
Yi Zhou giving a speech for TEDxParisSalon about her work
and social media and Internet development in China
YI ZHOU STUDIO
studio@yi-yo.net
The Mansion, Block 1, 457 Shanxi Rd (N), Shanghai
PRESS CONTACT
Press@yi-yo.net
GALLERY REPRESENTATION:
HongKong: HANART TZ GALLERY
www.hanart.com
NewYork: RH GALLERY
www.rhgallery.com
Shanghai: PEARL LAM GALLERIES
www.pearllam.com
AGENTS:
www.creativeexchangeagency.com
YI ZHOU'S PRODUCTION COMPANY:
Yi Zhou is art director for
art fashion advisor member for
SOCIAL MEDIA
weibo
- Yi Zhou :
www.weibo.com/yizhoustudio
whosay
- Yi Zhou :
www.whosay.com/yizhou
twitter
- Yi Zhou :
www.twitter.com/yizhoustudio
facebook
- Yi Zhou :
www.facebook.com/YiZhouOfficial
pinterest
- Yi Zhou :
www.pinterest.com/yizhoustudio
YI ZHOU VENICE BIENNALE EXHIBITION INTRODUCTION TEXT
Achille Bonito Oliva
“Art is a hope for happiness,” said Baudelaire. The total art of Yi Zhou is the demonstration of the Chinese artist’s desire to represent the depth and the surface of things, the appearances of the world and the deep pulsations that pass through the human mind. Her work is the fruit of a multimedia language that combines cinema, digital animation, photography, sculpture, painting, drawing and contemporary music. In this way, even through video, the work becomes the ability to represent time in space, to capture the fleeting moments of life in a fragmentary vision that succeeds in capturing the present without forgetting the past, in a dialogue between different cultures, between East and West. A sophisticated and surprising literary memory enables Yi Zhou to create references to the “Divine Comedy” by Dante Alighieri, to the “Decameron” by Boccaccio, to the story of Nastagio degli Onesti, and even to recover the comedy of Gogol’s “The Nose”. These references are successfully absorbed by a visual language that grasps the idea of the plot (completely western) interwoven with a flowing concept of circular time (completely oriental). The four films that Yi Zhou presents in Venice document the precocious maturity of a cosmopolitan artist who has explored many cultural and poetic genres that are quite far from one another, such as that of Nam June Paik and Andy Warhol, American cinema and the French Nouvelle Vague, Italian design and Asiatic statue production. These interweaving capacities demonstrate the eroticism of a work that finds the confirmation of an idea of total art in the synthesis of languages. Which means the representation of a value that is very suited to our time, namely the coexistence of differences.
Chang Tsong-zung
The Age of Yi
Yi Zhou embraces the full range of visual and audio experiences available to new media art, she takes on new scientific products, and weaves unabashedly into her work celebrity glamour and cinematic spectacle. We are reminded by Yi that our age is equidistant between Homeric epic and mass media Hollywood, and that we are equally at home with karaoke sentimentality and state-sponsored terror. With the modern alchemy of media technology, the artist can touch any familiar objects with magic, and any present moment can be a moment of adventure.
Yi's fantasies are gilded by a lunar aura, they recede into a mythical distance that constantly wakes up to the fragility of the physical body. She is fascinated by epic tales, to which she responds and imagines as bodily transformation (of heart, ear, head and inner organs). Immersing into herself as the source of adventure, she cracks the present moment to open up an abyss of mythic time. Adolescent innocence and vain glory, cosmic dream and virtual reality, heroic epoch and soap sentiment, Yi has created fresh scope for imagination by bringing all of these on stage.
Group exhibitions
2012
"French Edges" ,
The 17th Annual Boston French Film Festival
Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Boston, USA
July 26th, 2012
2011
"FIAC 2011:Cinéphémère" ,
Fiac Outdoor Project, in collaboration with the Louvre & Fondation Ricard
Tuileries Garden,Paris
October 18th - October 23rd, 2011
"Pure View: Contemporary Art Exhibition" ,
5th Chengdu Biennale, Chengdu,China
September 30th - October 30th, 2011
"Melodymania" ,
RH Gallery, New York
September 13th - October 29th, 2011
"1988-2011 Chinese Video Art" ,
Minsheng Museum, Shanghai, China
September 9th - November 27th, 201
2010
Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai, China
"OPEN 13" -International Exhibition of Sculptures and Installations
Venice Lido, San Servolo Island
Sep 1st - Oct 3rd, 2010
"Currents 2010" Currents Video Exhibition
Santa Fe
June 17th -June 27th, 2010
Giorni Felici: Welcome to the 22nd Century, Fondazione Testori, Milan, Italy
"Chinese Contemporary Art", Contrasts Gallery, Shanghai, China
2009
"Vraoum ! Trésors de la bande dessinée et art contemporain"
Maison Rouge, Paris
May 28th -September 27th, 2009
"The Big World: Recent Art from China".
Chicago Cultural Center
April 25th - August 30th, 2009
2008
Guangzhou Triennial
Guangdong Museum of Art
September 6th- November 16th, 2008
Reperti contemporanei confini.
Ventimiglia.
October 25th - December 8th.
2007
"Fiac 2007 : Archetype"
Gallerie Jérôme de Noirmont ,Grand Palais, Paris
October 18th -22th, 2007
"Avatars" film screening
64th Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematrografica di Venezia
September 6th -7th, 2007
Verismo Magico
Not Gallery
September 18th - October 26th, 2007
"Good Morning Babylonia"
Beijing
February 2nd, 2007
2006
Screening short film for La Mer
White Space, Amsterdam, Netherland.
November 14th, 2006
Quarter relocated Gallery
Turin, Italy
November 11th – December 15th
Musée du Quai Branly
June 27th, 2006
2005
"Biennale d'Art contemporain chinois"
Montpellier, France
June - August, 2005
"Le futur des villes"
Nancy, France,
June - August, 2005
"Festival Sonar"
Barcelona, Spain
June, 2005
2004
"Fraicheur de vivre"
Shanghai and Canton Museum of Contemporary art, China
September, 2004
"Generation Video"
Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris, France
January, 2004
2003
"Love me forever and never" in collaboration with the Crazy Horse
Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France
November, 2003
"40 Views of an Icon" by Comme des Garçons
Spazio Consolo, Milano, Italy
November, 2003
"FIAC 2003: Fantasme Fantastique"
Galerie Jerome de Noirmont, Paris,France
October, 2003
"Made in China"
Fondation d'art contemporain Daniel et Florence Guerlain,France
September, 2003
"40 Views of an Icon" by Comme des Garçons
Hermitage, Moscow, Russia
September, 2003
"Biennale de Tirana 02"
Tirana, Albania,
September 2003
"DVD by Numbers Presentation"
SonyDreamWorld, Paris, France
September, 2003
"Something about love"
Casino Luxembourg - Forum d'art contemporain, Luxembourg
July, 2003
2002
"Premiere Vue"
Passage du Retz, Paris, France
September, 2002
"Alter Ego"
Musee de l'Histoire de l'Art, Luxembourg, Luxembourg
July, 2002
"www.whitneybiennial.com,"
online exhibition,
March 2002
Solo exhibitions
2012
やがてすべてが 過ぎ去る後も あなただけを思う Time has flown and all things have passed away; but my heart has remained, always missing you. Shintaro Akatsu Gallery, Tokyo, Japan March 20th – April 22nd, 2012
“Underworlds rising”, RH Gallery, NY, USA March 6th – April 27th, 2012
"Scuplture Labyrinth" ,
Hanart TZ Gallery, HongKong, China
January 6th - 30th , 2012
2011
"Days Of Yi" , 54th International Art Exhibition
la Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy
June 4th - November 27th , 2011
2010
"The Ear Bridge and The Greatness" ,
Contrasts Gallery, Shanghai, China
November 14th – December 16th, 2010
"I Am Your Simulacrum"
20 Hoxton Square Projects.
september 1st - september 11th， 2010.
"Hegemony or Survival" ,
Contrasts Gallery special screening space, Shanghai, China
2009
Yi Zhou booth by Art Asia / Scope Pavilion at Basel Miami Art Fair. December 1th -4th 2009.
"Around the EarBridge", SuZhou True Color Museum of contemporary art. November 1th 2009 - February 25 th 2010.
June 8-14.
2008
“My Heart Laid Bare”
Ooi Botos gallery, Hong Kong.
October 30th 2008 - January 10th， 2009.
"Hear, Earth, Heart"
Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont, Paris, France,
April - May 2008
"1280 Towers", with the support of Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont and the initiative of Comité Vendôme.
2007
"Il passato è remoto anzi sarà sempre presente
Una scultura, un video, un anello."
Galleria Nicola Ricci.
Pietrasanta, Italy,
May 18th, 2007
2006
"Three Cantos: Prefiguration: Inferno, urgatorio, Paradiso"
Palazzo Vecchio: Cappella di Eleonora di Toledo, Studiolo di Francesco I, Terrazza di Saturno
Projection and Performance on the Façade of Palazzo Vecchio and Torre Vecchia,
Florence, Italy,
June 2006
2005
"Dreamscape"
Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont, Paris, France,
May - June 2005
2004
"Mountaintank" Performance,
Deitch Projects, New York, USA,
September 2004
2002
"Y_Game"
Noirmont Prospect, Paris, France,
September - November 2002
Yi Zhou's first exhibition 1st featured in Le Figaro, 2003.