Ann Zhao's 'Spillover' at Empty Gallery Questions Artistic Production

Empty Gallery in Hong Kong presents 'Spillover', the first Greater Asia exhibition by Shanghai-based artist Ann Zhao. The show's title references a Zhuangzi passage on speech's indeterminacy, but also suggests chaotic breaches between categories. Central to the exhibition is 'Ben Ming Nian (本命年)', an installation of twenty-four photographs on the gallery's 19th floor. Alternating black-and-white and muted color, these images present diaristic moments from Zhao's daily life, yet remain inscrutable, deliberately failing to construct a unified artistic persona. The photos trace a minor narrative: flight from New York, building a new life in Shanghai, dissolution of old attachments. Zhao forgoes painting—her primary medium—substituting photographic records of inactivity, referencing Josef Strau's 'non-productive attitude'. She argues contemporary art is in crisis, alienated from embodied experience. Her interest in Traditional Chinese Medicine offers an escape, reframing taste as vitality. On the 18th floor, Zhao pairs 'Untitled' (2011), a pastoral childhood painting, with 'Curse' (2026), a black monochrome enlargement. The relation suggests dualities (child/adult, hope/despair) but unravels them through the unstable body. 'Curse' is left leaning against the wall, leaving open a space of transition. Zhao's self-appropriative gesture enshrines an earlier moment while revealing difference, suggesting circulation and reversibility rooted in bodily experience.