Istemi Kaghan

June 17, 2018-July 28, 2018


Artist / Zhao Gang

Curator / Sun Dongdong

Text / Sun Dongdong

Literally translated as The Anno Domini Dynasty, the Chinese title of Zhao’s solo exhibition in Taipei this year conveys a sense of history, as if it is recounting the story of a specific dynasty (e.g. the Northern Yuan) in the history of China. While the exhibition’s English title Istemi Kaghan alludes to the Western Turkic Khaganate (during the Northern Zhou Dynasty), a foreign land mentioned without elaborating in Chinese historical records, its Chinese title is a fortiori beyond our capability of investigation. What the title refers is in fact little more than a historical world fabricated by the painter. However, it is within this narrative context woven with fictions and realities that Zhao took a remarkable turn from tracing the root of his ethnic identity to considering states and civilizations, which is a follow-up of his 2013 solo exhibition The Khitans that featured issues concerning national and cultural identities. Here, Zhao’s works meet Deleuze’s definition of a “war machine,” galloping through the ruins of history and repeatedly mounting attacks on the essentialist ideology. His paintings also embody Walter Benjamin’s theory of allegory, piecing fragments of civilizations together to form a collage-like portrait series. The symbolic meaning of the allegory is always highlighted at the very moment when the war machine launched an attack. Each of his paintings echoes a moment like that, so that the distance between paintings is tantamount to the interval between historical moments. The complex historical implications arising from Zhao’s works have been channeled through his strong self-awareness to a broader context of reality—the titles of his paintings, such as The Conquered Man, The Conqueror, The Rain of Minnan, Sage, Mother of the Nation, National Treasure and The Goddess of the Republic, completed a continuous loop of thought that travels through time and space.