From Zhou Xiaohu's works, we can feel that animation and scene can be juxtaposed to maintain parallel space and time, or exist independently. The dreams, absurd imagination and unreal color world in video may just show the authenticity of the brain or subconscious, full of strange and charming visual charm.
Zhou Xiaohu
Zhou Xiaohu (b. 1960, Changzhou) is a pioneer of video animation in China . Zhou began using computers as an artistic tool in 1998. As one of China’s most well-known most prolific contemporary artists, he specializes in inducing confusion and bafflement, making viewers question the evidence of their senses and their assumptions about the so-called ‘facts’. He has since experimented with stop-frame video animation, video installation and computer-gaming software, whereby the interlayering of images between moving pictures and real objects has become his signature style. Working across performance, photography, installation, sculpture, video, and animation, Zhou’s practice reflects the documentation of history in a digital age.
The work of Zhou Xiaohu has been exhibited at MoMA, New York, USA; Tate Liverpool; Kunst Museum Bern, Switzerland; and the International Center of Photography, New York, USA and the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Wien, Austria. He has participated Shanghai Biennale; Seville International Art Biennale in 2004; Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane, Australia in 2006; The Real Thing, Tate Liverpool in 2007; Not Soul For Sale, Tate Modern Turbine Hall in 2010; and the 8th Gwangju Biennial, Gwangju Art Museum, Korea in 2010. Zhou Xiaohu was awarded the CCAA Award in 2002 and 2006; and won the gold award in the experimental video category in the 36th Houston international film festival; and 2014 has been awarded a DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program.