NADA Miami 2021

Hou Zichao’s compositions hover in contingent spaces where the immediate present of digital imagery encounters the transformational irresolution of the canvas. Centering on the interface between free-floating largely abstracted objects with landscapes, grants his paintings the appearance of collages – foundational sites of
modernity where information is lost and gained – while signaling the vast non-perspectival spaces of historical Chinese landscape painting. Ciphered within their sumptuous attention to surface is an expression of complex entanglements between ancient forms of divinatory data and emergent terms of algorithmic prospecting–reconciling nuanced and calligraphic brushwork, the on/off binary logics of digital tool sets, and the invocation of sprayed acrylic as a medium of ideological dissent.

Hou Zichao (b. China, 1988) lives and works in Beijing. Solo exhibitions include: “Everlasting,” Downs & Ross, New York, New York (2021); “No Time for Romance,”Mine Project, Hong Kong (2020); “Light Breaks Where No Sun Shines,” Boers-Li Gallery, Beijing (2019); “FOUNTAIN,” AOMA, YT Creative Media, Beijing (2018);
“Ray. Stone. Wave,” Aura Gallery, Shanghai (2017). Hou Zichao’s works and projects have been presented in group exhibitions including, “CLEAN,” SPURS Gallery, Beijing (2020); “LOVE LOVE LOVE: Intimate,” Today Art Museum, Beijing (2018); “Elite Young Artists Program,” Rightview Art Museum & Guan Shanyue Art
Museum, Beijing & Shenzhen (2016). The artist completed his BA Honors degree from Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, London, in 2013, and earned his Master’s degree from Chelsea College of Art and Design, London, in 2014.