(drag me)
1. 路径 Pathways
2. 空间 Spaces
3. 片段 Vignettes
4. 版画 Prints
About
Resume
Xiaoyao Yao (b. 1996) is a painter and silkscreen printmaker. He received his MFA with a full scholarship from Cornell University and his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His works have been exhibited at Jack Hanley Gallery in New York, the Johnson Museum in New York, Cospace Shanghai, YI SPACE in Nanjing, Abu Dhabi Art Fair, ART021 Shanghai Art Fair, Art Central Hong Kong, Taipei Art Fair, Shenzhen Art Fair, and more.
Xiaoyao Yao’s works stem from his observations of his surroundings and the relationships between everyday life and human presence. By composing and arranging elements of intimate spaces, he reconstructs the essence of the everyday. They are images of intimate spaces: a dimly lit corner of a bathroom, a pathway in the desert, or a weight scale in a men's restroom. These are often fleeting moments, places of passage, places of maintenance, rather than destinations. At the blurred boundary between storytelling and daily life, his work serves as both a reminder of simplicity and a reflection on the fragility of the everyday as it quietly slips through time.
Xiaoyao Yao’s work focuses on the often overlooked moments of maintenance and transition—those in-between spaces where life is neither beginning nor ending but simply unfolding. These are the moments we don’t often stop to notice, yet they are filled with quiet significance. He creates oil paintings and prints that direct attention to the mundane but meaningful—like the moment driving home alone after a family gathering, when the car is empty, the street is quiet, and the glow of streetlights casts fleeting shadows or the solitary time spent in a bathroom, the soft hum of water running, the quiet reflections in a mirror—intimate, transitory moments that seem ordinary, yet hold layers of emotion and presence.
The scenes he depicts aren’t destinations but pauses in between, spaces that reflect the subtle balance of absence and presence. The empty street after the car has emptied, the bathroom with only your own reflection, these moments embody a kind of suspended time, where the world feels both intimate and vast. By focusing on these moments of solitude, he aims to shine a light on the neglected parts of our lives—those moments of maintenance, reflection, and transition, where we move from one state to another without fully noticing. These spaces, though mundane, carry the weight of our daily existence.
Through precise mark-making and a muted color palette, Xiaoyao Yao explores the tension between the familiar and the strange. The emptiness of a room, the stillness of an empty street—these moments are often fleeting and understated, but they are rich with emotional resonance. His oil paintings and etchings extend this exploration, using subtle shifts in light and perspective to invite viewers to engage with what might otherwise go unnoticed. Whether it’s the stillness of a car parked alone on an empty road or the quiet solitude of a bathroom corner, these moments become an invitation to pause and reflect on the narratives we carry in our everyday lives.
In creating these works, Xiaoyao Yao confront the feelings of detachment and solitude that arise from the familiarity of place. Inspired by his experience of Ithaca, where the city once felt full of novelty but later became routine, he focuses on the quiet moments between tasks, between journeys, and between people. These works aim to capture the poetry in these “in-between” spaces, revealing the emotional significance of what we often overlook in our daily routines.