About
![Zhao Duan](data/artist/avatars/1715069257455511868.png)
Zhao Duan
In comparison to purely practicing performance or painting, Zhao Duan connects two extremes through "impression-keeping" recording method. The imprint serves as both the residue of the action and the authentic, unalterable evidence of its presence.
Medium | Performance art |
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Location | France |
Date of birth | 1981 |
Zhao Duan primarily engages in performance art creation, but to avoid the common associations triggered by these four words, her work should be understood in finer detail as creations guided by touch and action. Placing someone else's hand in her palm and then using a brush to sketch on it, while her body bends inward holding an aluminum plate, the fitting together of people/objects forms the first layer of direct, intuitive, and intimate contact. Meanwhile, the painting on the palm, touched by a hundred people, and the aluminum plate molded by the body, accumulate as a scale of time or bodily force, persisting through fatigue, naturally producing the thickness and bitterness of the process, transforming contact into a form of action, overlaying it with a mottled background color of clarity.
The delicate balance between lightness and heaviness also indirectly confirms the artist's definition of her own actions as a combination of "verb + noun". Neither emphasizing the "heat" of "action" inherited from the 1950s and 1960s, nor attempting to lean towards the "coolness" of the suspended "noun"; Zhao Duan explores the space between these two aspects, translating the results of her exploration into innovative attempts with media. In comparison to purely practicing performance or painting, she prefers to connect these two extremes through the "impression-keeping" recording method. The imprint serves as both the residue of the action and the authentic, unalterable evidence of its presence. White paper, napkins, transparent organic glass panels, white wooden boards... Zhao Duan often dresses in black and white attire at the performance site—materials used to carry imprints are chosen for their simplicity in color or texture, allowing irregularities, fragility, boundary-breaking, and subtleties of imprints to emerge from complexity.