Zhao Yang’s earlier paintings tend to be populated by mysterious figures, alone or in couples, symmetrically arranged and portrayed as though viewed from afar. The subjects are mostly human, although sometimes mermaids and angels appear. Whatever the characters appear to be doing—dancing, ice-skating, playing music—there is always the sense that they have rich interior lives, that they are anticipating something.
In Zhao’s latest paintings, exhibited in (2020), for example, three cherubim appear to float above a pentagon with a superimposed sketch of a bodybuilder’s physique, admiring himself, or his Platonic ideal, in a mirror. Looking closer, one discovers that the cherubim are iterations of the same bust, as if from a neoclassical life drawing class; the bodybuilder’s reflection is a weeping cone; pills are scattered on the ground; and a phalanx of geometric forms float nearby. When asked about this turn away from representative figuration, Zhao replied: “Keeping a distance from real objects has always been the field that I am exploring. Real objects are inherently suspicious. Reality is not authentic. What is reality?… I think the greater authenticity is in uncertain territory and coiling around objects erratically.”
