Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo presents the first edition of ARTLAND, a new series of exhibitions focusing on emerging artists from all over the world.
The first artist in the series to be presented at the Fondazione’s centre for contemporary in Turin is Chao Kao, an artist of Chinese origin who lived in Jonkowo in Poland for many years and who currently lives and works in Oregon, USA. Chao Kao presents a series of still life paintings, which reveal his fascination with anonymous objects and spaces, such as corners, pipes and shoelaces. Although he has been actively working for many years, this will be Chao Kao’s first exhibition in an arts institution.
Chao Kao is not only a painter, but also a self-taught poet. Each work exhibited will be accompanied by a short poem, which the artist calls zwykly (simple). To understand the concept of zwykly, it is necessary to know Chao Kao's personal history.
In 1978, the official reintroduction of a law requiring ethnic Han couples to have only one child was imminent in China, and his family, fearing forced abortion, decided to keep the pregnancy a secret. When Chao Kao was born, they illegally gave him up for adoption to a Polish couple visiting North China with a Polish delegation. Chao Kao has never visited China and does not speak Chinese; the only link with that past is the small tattoo his parents gave him on his ankle, with his name and date of birth. A biography marked by foreignness, by being out of place, which resonates in his paintings and poems. Chao Kao's paintings express a despair, a kind of minimalism devoid of theory and ideology, ‘strange’ haiku, as he calls them. The recurring themes of representation refer to an idea of bonding, of union. In his words, ‘I like anonymous containers…. Laces, corners, pipes, they are all things that serve to contain something, to unite one point to another'. In search of a language, Chao Kao chose the Polish word ‘zwykly’ to characterise the state of confusion that characterises his life.
