Zhao Zhao's multidimensional body of work is an inspection of China's contemporary profile and the socio-political consequences of individual free will. For his new exhibition, Zhao Zhao takes as his theme the common gourd, so ordinary in western countries but imbued with a long historical and spiritual legacy in China. In Control, the artist presents 19 new marble sculptures whose varied forms are borrowed from wax gourds. Additionally on view are works from his renowned Constellation series, which centers on Zhao Zhao’s reflection on the ephemeral passage of time. The early manufacturing of molded gourd wares began as early as the Ming dynasty, created by encasing a newly sprung gourd into a mold, so as the gourd grows it slowly conforms to the shape of the mold. The prevalence of human interference to create powerful forms of symmetry, beauty and control, is an easy metaphor for how people - both individually and collectively — comply to another’s domination. There is also a parallel, perhaps, to how young gourds are encapsulated into molds, their different configurations are suggestive of how important the formative gestures that occur at the beginning really are, as are the authoritative checks to sustain growth. Zhao Zhao’s exhibition is a tactile study in the way we form relationships: to ourselves, to power, to minority and majority players, and how our own physical bodies are implicated within those narratives.