HdM Gallery is pleased to present “Ghost Raising”, the latest solo exhibition of Zhao Yinou. This is Zhao Yinou’s third solo exhibition at HdM Gallery after “On the Wings of A Swan” in 2022. The exhibition features over 30 works on canvas and wood, alongside the artist’s first experimental integration of sound installations within painting. Zhao’s recent practice delves into meditations on eternity, transforming diffuse collective memories of our era-viewed through the microscopic lens of individual experience-into layered spatiotemporal structures.
Light
Light is the universe’s primal language—formless yet shaping all visible forms. In Zhao Yinou’s oeuvre, light manifests itself as a spiritual presence: the sacred light, the arbitrary light, the stalemate light, and the repressed light appear repeatedly in different densities and in different stages of her creation, forming multiple echoes between the artist her spatiotemporal self. In her new artworks, light appears in every infinite texture and space radiated by herself, becoming a link connecting countless parallel spaces: on ice, sea, trees, mountains, and grasslands, resembles a fleeting blink of cosmic radiance.
Dust
The traces after "burning" are not only the suspension of material particles in the layers of paint, but also the poetic interval between the artist's memory and the present. Zhao Yinou's creation does not rely on linear narrative. She restrains and selects emotions and memories in a cross-dimensional perspective. Time is distorted into any frame that can be extracted in the physical dimension, and transformed into repeated brushstrokes and spray-painted textures on the canvas. Layered surfaces do not merely obscure but capture emotional variables through accumulated dust, extrapolating potential parallel worlds. The delayed emotional catharsis and stratified “dust” forge an intangible distance between artwork and viewer, immersing audiences in a heterogeneous field of overlapping time and space—a realm both visual and psychic.
Breath
The sound installation incorporated into this exhibition leads the audience into the artist's sealed field with a flowing energy that can be perceived in multiple dimensions. The low hum on the back of each artwork once again forms a kind of unspeakable "interval" with the audience. The "breath" of hearing drives the "breath" of vision. Between one breath and another, time is like a lie, the future collapses into the past, and the past flows towards the end.
Reignition
The brevity inherent in the existence of human beings in the universe is heavy and depressing; in this unburned box, Zhao Yinou uses almost always monochrome paint to visualize abstract emotions into an existence that jumps out of time and space, in the rational laws of physics, she uses a silent declaration to outline a love letter, which is eternally entangled in the vast smoke.
About the artist
Zhao Yinou was born in 1972 and currently lives and works in Paris. She was the producer of documentaries “À l'ouest des rails” and “He Fengming”. Recent group and solo exhibitions include: “Being of Evils”, Hive Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China (2020); “Psychicalreality”, Space Station, Beijing, China (2019); “Prisonnier”, Vanities, Paris, French (2019); “HAPPY PEOPLE......”, Inside-out Art Museum, Beijing, China (2019); “HER KIND•CHUANG”, Zhuzhong Art Museum, Beijing, China (2018); “The Pleasures of Adventures”, N3 gallery, Beijing, China (2016); “OPEN TO YOU”, Pusan, Korea (2014) and etc.
Special thanks to: +1, An Ning, Lv You, f, Ivy Zhao for their support to this exhibition.
