the texture of expression
07.05 --- 10.23 / 2022 OCAT Xian
In the series “2022-Free No.14” I try to exclude the conscious act of drawing, the use of brushes to execute consciousness, and the subjective and tangible language of form. As far as possible, I use various uncontrollable sculptural methods to relate to paper, and continuously extend this shaping action, finally obtaining a magical and unexpected visual experience. For the material, paper, it is the base point where I start shaping and a door into which I enter when I repeatedly color with water-based colors, finding many interesting spatial relationships. These relationships are embodied between the threads, cords, holes, colors and the paper material itself as seen in the picture. They attract each other and use each other to lead each other to different spaces, and the holes in the work become passages to different worlds.In this series of experiments, I produce sculpture, images, and paintings in a sculptural way, and I intend to open up painting in a purer way by doing so.
the EXHIBITION of annual of contemporary ART OF CHINA SHANGHAI 2019
2019 Shanghai China
'Opening up Wasteland' project is an interactive experimental project involving acting, performance, sound, and theater. Artist Yao Hai tries to create a production ecology by interweaving multiple boring behaviors and performance units with materials to explore and test the sensing distance between the body's various sensory systems and art.
Yao Hai intends to avoid and confront the habitual identity formed by people in daily life by shaping this boring production system, deliberately creating a kind of disorder, impromptu ambiguity and confusion, trying to get inspiration and new production power in a dynamic path of construction and decomposition. The artist will complete questioning and verification in a process of continuous evolution, and experience the possibility of generating as pure an aesthetic as possible.
Provozierte Beziehungen
2019.11.14 - 2019.11.23
Lepsien Art Foundaiton Dusseldorf
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'Provoking Relations' is a result of an on-going exploration on paper as a primary material language during Yao Hai’s 3-month residency at Lepsien Art Foundation in Düsseldorf. He explores the production relations between people and things, and the essence of being part of this evolving relationship in the ecosystem as an artist. He selected several elements as interfering languages including circle, square, color, metal rivet and sewing machine, and introduced these elements to a physical production relation with paper. Either they are tangible or intangible; imaginary or real, these elements are the inducement and energy to explore and open new possibilities in paper.
Yao Hai believes that the significance of his practice is the evolving process of the symbiotic relationship between the course of actions and his material languages. In the context of a basic relationship, different things can inspire unpredictable new languages to develop new relationship context. Yao Hai finds the trajectory of these subtle relationship networks intriguing and the exploration process makes him feel closest to arts.
姚海 Yao Hai
2018.11.30 - 2019.1.7
世界畫廊, 香港 Galerie du Monde, Hong Kong
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Installation works shown in this exhibition were inspired by his other paintings. And digital paintings, also shown in this exhibition, were created based on the stills captured at a performance art project of himself. The association with space and material was the underlying indication. Corresponding to his paintings, some of the symbols and language reflect a part of real life. It is a topic for discussion. It is also about a spatial relationship. To be exact, it is something that exists in real life. It is brought back to the reality in a symbolic form through the creation process of the works, generating a repeated fusion of space and time.
Yao Hai's understanding of a material is that there are infinite ways to open it up, and that the birth of every new technology will give a material new possibilities. On the contrary, it can also be said that the material itself possesses all the possibilities to be opened. Therefore, the significance of opening is infinite. It is not only to satisfy the artist's visual expectation and stimulation, but also a kind of endless impetus, prompting Yao Hai to never stop opening everything.
圖像中探險
Adventure in Graphics
2018.9.1 - 2018.9.30
五五畫廊, 上海 gallery 55, Shanghai
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'Adventure in Graphics' comprises performance on video, digital paintings and installation works. In different forms of exploration, Yao Hai tries to decompose elements such as materials, time, space, causality, logic, ego spirit and physical behavior to generate some presupposition to be solved and restore all the phenomena that can be transmitted through vision, and verify those practices that are not to speak of, hoping to get the extension and development of concept.
有機生產 Organic Production
2019.5.18 - 2019.6.4
要空間, 上海 Yell Space, Shanghai
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'Organic Production' is an interactive experimental project involving performance, behavior, sound and theater. Yao Hai tries to create a kind of production and symphony through multiple boring acts and performances. The various performances that make up the production are not directly related to each other, and do not have a clear direction and narrative, emphasizing a natural generation and fermentation. Yao Hai intends to obtain products and new production competency by shaping this boring production system. He will finish questioning and verification of answer in a constantly evolving process, and experience a possible generation of aesthetic at it’s purest.
新秩序 The New Order
2019.1.19 - 2019.2.24要空間, 上海 Yell Space, Shanghai
'The New Order' is an installation that emphasizes confrontation and intervention in multilateral relations. Yao Hai abandoned a repressed viewing perspective that sustains the seeming harmony. He refers to material as a relational object, that can be regarded as a dialogue between countless participants. He uses their instability, contingency, continuity and regenerability to create a new kind of dynamic. This kind of interaction allows proximity and dialogue as an approach to enter a new aesthetic context in a chaotic way, displaying an ever-changing world. In his works, Yao Hai uses wind as a driving force, not only to replace his body and mind, it also symbolizes a way to unfold objects. Wind arouses metal cylinders, paper, balloons, wood strip, microphones and other objects, and established continuous movement. This approach is similar to establishing a new order, or generating a never-ending game. Everything after this will evolve impermanently revolving around this context.
0 + 1 + 十二 Zero + One + Twelve
2018.9.9 - 2018.10.8
五五畫廊, 上海 gallery 55, Shanghai
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'Zero + One + Twelve' is composed of twelve films with similar symbol characteristics. The prototype of this group of works is an ink painting focusing on the exploration of symbols. Through transformation of the painting into a digital form and evolvement of the material, Yao Hai’s approach gives rise to new meaning and new direction. Yao Hai regards each film as an energy carrier that holds all information from anything. Multiple carriers blend into each other and create impromptu combinations within the same space, revealing visual fields of the superimposition, to give birth to a new visual language system. These new language and system are more in accordance with the definition of certain energy because they can simulate and induce new cognition and thinking, introducing thoughts into situations of the unknown and the unsolved.
解構的遊戲
Free Play of Deconstruction
2017.6.9 - 2017.6.30
合美術館, 中國武漢 United Art Museum, Wuhan, China
Yao Hai regards ‘deconstruction’ as a strategy or a game when creating the installations. The concept of ‘deconstruction’ originates from the philosopher Jacques Derrida. It implies the opposition of life and death – infinite substitutions take place within its structure. Substitution is movement, movement represents life. In order to avoid death, we must affirm death with joy. In fact, differentiation and deconstruction are Yao Hai’s approaches to look into his past. At the same time, he roams freely around the once established structure and its meaning to review and clarify the significance. The result of each differentiation and deconstruction reconstructs a new structure and meaning. Therefore, change and development in the creation process reflect the artist’s artistic practice evolving from one to zero and then zero to one. To a certain extent, Yao Hai’s creation can be regarded as a process of multiple deconstructions, a serious play in which dissection and exploration, deconstruction and reconstruction take place at the same time. This also seems to imply some kind of hope for the future, which may provide interesting clues to viewer’s imagination.
自由保鮮計劃
Freedom Preservation
2017.12.1 - 12.17
Taipei Artist Village 台北國際藝術村
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Yao Hai’s Freedom Preservation Project explores individual identity and the challenges and impact on freedom, democracy and fundamental values of a society in the age of information overload when people can freely and easily acquire fast changing world of information. Unrecognized social systems are inevitably facing the same threats. Due to Yao Hai’s subjective experience of identity change and the experience travelling and living abroad, the impact of cultural differences on him and the conscious knowledge of individual identity have gradually magnified. Self-recognition and recognition of others become interrelated that causes further doubts and questioning.
In this project, Yao Hai put himself into a situation where doubts and conflicts exist. The questioning process triggered reasoning and response.
界外 Beyond Boundaries
2016.12.3 - 2016.12.31
K11 Art Foundation Wuhan, China, 中國武漢
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In this exhibition, Yao Hai uses acrylic as the main material for his works. He attempts to use a single material as a cornerstone to unlock all cognition in order to construct and develop the works. By exploring the evolution and transformation of a specific material, he acquires an in-depth understanding of the material itself and thereby improving self-perception and raising the ability to perceive the world. Yao Hai believes that any material has a life of its own. They exist in various forms of energy, and the energy will neither be produced nor perished. It will only transform. In the exhibition, Yao Hai uses acrylic material to create unidentified objects in different shapes suspended throughout the exhibition space, with some scattered on the ground, in order to construct an energy field beyond the boundaries so as to physically confront the viewer, allowing them to experience the familiar strange world.
Art Fair
ART021 Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair
12–15 November 2020
gallery 55, Shanghai Exhibition Center
