1. Life

2. Career

3. Approach

4. Works
     Media and installations  

5. References

6. External links

Zhao, Suikang (赵穗康) is a Chinese-American artist who works on different media and genre including painting, sculpture, site-specific installation, interdisciplinary art and monumental public art projects.

Life

Zhao was born in Shanghai, China in 1956. He went to Haifeng farm after staying at home for three and half years' self-education following graduating from middle school. Zhao belongs the generation of the Cultural Revolution. He went to countryside as part of Chinese re-education program at the time, and he was also the first generation of Chinese students who attended college after a thirteen-year higher education closure throughout the Cultural Revolution.

In 1979, he went to study at Art Department, Shanghai Normal College. Upon his graduation in 1983., he was assigned a teaching job at Shanghai No.6th Normal School in 1983. A year later, he was expelled from the school, became one of few jobless independent artists at the time in China. Zhao left China and went graduate school at Academy of Art College in San Francisco in 1986. He unsatisfied with the program, didn't finish the school, left San Francisco for New York in 1987. From 1988-1990, Zhao enrolled graduate program at School of Visual Arts, where he received the MFA degree. Zhao joined member of faculty at Fine Arts Department, Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York in 1996.

Career

After his relocation to the United States in 1986 and upon his graduation from the School of Visual Arts in 1990, Zhao was one of the very first artists struggling to transform Bushwick, Brooklyn into an artist's community. While in Bushwick, he worked diligently and exhibited extensively, producing many sculptures and installations over the following six years. Then, in 1996, he created his first earth art project for the Djerassi Foundation in California during a temporary artist's residency. A year later, he had his first major solo exhibition at the Neuberger Museum of Art in 1997. Throughout his career Zhao has received many awards for his original artistic accomplishments. These include the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts, the Individual Artist Media Production Award, and more.

Since 1998, Zhao has created numerous, large-scale, permanent artworks for the public all over the country. Many of Zhao's public art projects involve the general public extensively.

Approach

Zhao's creative mind reflects upon his mixed cultural environment, his creativity idea appears not to focus on any particular style or concept. Instead, the artworks are rooted in the social and physical environment from which they are created and maintain a concentrated concern with Humanist philosophy.

Zhao has been inspired by artists such as Klee and Kandinsky, as well as the Chinese tradition of "human literacy", which a belief requires a person to learn different types of knowledge. His interest in visual art and music lead him to create many integrated artworks, which often break down the traditional boundary between different genres.

Works

Zhao has done many paintings, sculptures, media-site-specific installations that involves moving images and sound. Zhao's artwork has huge scale yet with intimate touch. His roster includes:

• The Gatevine^[1] 2016 A permanent wall sculpture extends on 800 ft-long retaining wall on West Ave. city of Norwalk, CT. The artwork used the words collected from residents.
• Skin of Languages 2014. A permanent wall sculpture with layers of languages at Nuskin Headquarter, Provo, Utah.
• Taokonick ^[2][3][4] 2013. A series of permanent artworks in different locations for Engine 38 firehouse, Tacony, PA. The artworks capture the grittiness and romance of firefighting with historical detail, and reverence to the community.
• We have a dream^[5] 2011. Three permanent artworks that work with residents at Johnson County Juvenile Detention Center, Kansas. 1, working with residents, a 96' relief on retaining wall by entrance, 2, glass security window with writings from residents, 3, glass installation at entrance, and other 4 rooms.
• Wisdom of Rainbow^[6] & Knowledge Exile^[7] 2009. Two permanent projects for the Marriott Library, University of Utah. Wisdom of Rainbow is in Atrium space. Knowledge Exile 50 books objects are placed in & outside of library.
• Winds of Aphrodite 2008 Kansas City Bartle Hall Convention Center North Dock project. Collaborated with Crawford architect KC. Architectural artwork locate at 12th Street & Broadway.
• Three permanent outdoors sculptures.^[8] for Central Phoenix / East Valley Light Rail Transit Stations. 2008. Hands:^[9] two cast bronze hand sculptures at Dorsey Station. Weaving Texts, two forged steel panels at Smith-Martin Station. Text Columns, two cast Fortom MG columns with glass at McClintock Station
• Script of Vine-a trilogy of prelude and fugue 2007 A permanent site-specific public art project for the Oregon State University Health and Counseling Center—Eugene, OR. The artworks consist of three parts and are in three different sites throughout the facility. Basic designed elements are writing that submitted by students and staff.^[10]
• Dreams of Sky 2005 A permanent site-specific public art project for Celentano School, New Haven, CT.
• Portland Pamphlets 1999 A permanent site-specific public art project for Oregon Bureau of General Service, City of Portland,OR
• Two outdoor site-specific projects 1996 at Djerassi Foundation, Woodside, CA. Floating Poetry deals with the memory of life and death. 68 floating objects are installed along two miles of the estate's creek. Burning Green is two rubber hand sculptures on a huge burned redwood tree. The rubber hands are etched written poetry in Chinese and English.

Media and installations

• La Pastorale—G major 2017 is an integrative sound installation that produces the harmonic G major triad. Three singing bowls are placed in different locations of the space, so that sound will be produced by chance either single or combine notes of G, B or D, which the vibration directly connects the body.
• Polyphonic Realities 1997 an integrated and interactive internet related sound installation.
• Internal Heliocentric Parallax 1996 An installation with synchronized computer and sound controlled slides projection on layered mash.
• Fumbling 1996 A sound and video sculpture.
• Mask of Identities 1994 Two mask objects with alternative dissolved slide projection.
• Impossibility of Intimacy 1997 an site specific installation.
• Bathroom 1996 A site specific installation with interactive sound, water and paint.
• Neighborhood 1995 A synthesis of sound installation and electronic performance. The impetus of the work springs from a recreation of the Celebration of Cultural Wars, which was staged on the site of the burning truck in1994. The project was collaborated with artist Hu Bing.
• Hunted Stair 1994. Projected installation on industrial building in the Bushwick neighborhood in Brooklyn. Location: 47 Thames Street, Brooklyn, NY
• The Feast of Belshazzar 1994 A Dissolve controlled multi-slide projection and sound installation.

References

External links

• Artist's website
• Deutsche Fotothek
• The Book Town
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20080828103048/http://www.fireart.net/architecture/commercial_page/portland_dev.html Fireart Inc]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20110723220048/https://www.neoimages.net/artwork.aspx?nid=2004515 NeoImages]

• QB (New York City Subway service)
• QBO
• Q-Bond
• Q-bracket
• Q- Brighton Local via Broadway Express
• Q-Brighton Local via Broadway Express
• QB's Finest
• Q bus
• Q-bus
• Q-Bus
• QB VII
• QBZ-95
• QBZ-97
• Qc
• Q.C.
• QCA
• QCad
• Q. Caecilius Metellus Pius
• Q-car
• QCD (disambiguation)
• QC (disambiguation)
• QCD lattice model
• QCD matter
• Qcd mattter
• QCD scale