Zhong Biao is the first Chinese artist to be invited to give a solo show in the country of Montenegro, a small territory which nonetheless stands importantly at the crossroads of Eastern and Western Europe. As such, Zhong Biao’s exhibition is a rare and entirely momentous event. Bordering the Dalmatian shores of the Mediterranean Sea, the Republic of Montenegro could re-establish its independency as society and culture only few years ago, in 2006.
Actually, it’s not the first public solo show at all of Zhong Biao in Europe. Last year, 2013, he was invited to share with “The Universe of Unreality: Zhong Biao’s Visions” the Biennale di Venezia as Collateral Event. But this show was realised as a solo work, a large multi media installation in the Venetian Renaissance church “Santa Maria della Visitazione”. Interacting in a marvelous way with the architecture and its interior room setup of artworks that ranged from sculpture to painting, and from times of the Re-sculpture to painting, and from times of the Renaissance to Baroque, it was a unique interlacing of different cultures and of different times.
This event gained Zhong Biao the invitation to the actual venue, Porto Montenegro’s exhibition hall with its Naval Heritage Collection, and this time it’s a retrospective solo show, an overview of his work, concentrating on the last nine years, 2006 to 2014. This show will give the audience an insight in the most decisive epoch of Zhong Biao’s work, and the artist the chance for a recapitulation at a crucial turning point in his questioning of the relations and transitions between the latent and the apparent dynamics of cosmic and mankind’s energies.
