Young Artists Experimental Season: Zhou Hoho “Pure and Pure”

Under the darkness, above life

The more I enter Zhou Brown’s world, the more I feel that everything she cares about and creates is related to life.

Zhou Brown described her studio as a “biological laboratory”. When I first entered, it felt like I had entered an unorganized warehouse in the Natural History Museum, but there were no complex classification cabinets or archaeological research rooms inside. But after in-depth communication with Brown Brown, I found that her studio is a fusion of music, art, clothing, literature, biology, geology, history, and other fields that she has carefully selected. All concrete or abstract elements are injected into her life experience, whether it is her beloved clothing cutting and material research, her love for metal music and culture, or the carefully kept various flora and fauna… Her space and collection are like an organism constantly searching for, or shaping, various mysterious powers that we overlook. I am increasingly realizing that an artist should not be simply defined. Her life, space, hobbies, emotions, and even her attitude towards offspring, pets, and even plants will open up a new understanding of her.

In 2019, we began a lively discussion on how to restart some unknown practices through an action to build an exhibition hall into a “laboratory”. The sudden outbreak of the epidemic disrupted all plans, but during this period, Zhou Brownan devoted more energy to self reflection, reading, observation, experimentation, and companionship. Her understanding of life is also more subtle and determined. Therefore, as the 2021 A4 Art Museum Youth Artist Experiment Season resumes, we are pleased to collaborate with Zhou Brownan to combine the spirit of experimentation with the hidden vitality and sharpness of life, presenting new understandings and interpretations of nature, life, and humanity by artists after the pandemic.

In this experimental season, Zhou Brownan attempted to construct a quiet and mysterious “alien laboratory” through eight works – a spatial field that seemed to be reserved for future human cognition of itself: an internalized “skeleton”, a solidified “matrix”, an insect’s “totem”, a reflective “coarse convex”, and a series of hidden codes and ceremonial spaces composed of installations, sculptures, clothing, music, literature, and material experiments. Artists attempt to showcase their attention and research on a wider range of diverse ecosystems, such as nature, ecological networks, and subcultures, in addition to exploring the physical aspects and expressing their own life experiences with texture. We hope that the audience can open up their six senses (touch, sight, smell, hearing, taste, intuition) to enter Zhou’s world, and feel from multiple perspectives the theme of the artist’s constant exploration and dismantling in lonely exploration and open practice – the code of life.

For most people, our cognitive pathways towards a diverse world are often obscured by our limited perspectives and experiences. But beneath the soil, under the skin, under isolation, under the abyss, under the spirit, and even in the darkness, there exists tremendous vitality and energy in even more vast yet hidden realms. The artistic power and vitality of Zhou Brown come from this. She said, “As life, we are fearless.”. Just as only by continuously exploring in the unknown can humans face their own ignorance. Only by slowly hiking on the unknown path can we truly feel the more wonderful creativity above life.

——Li Jie