Tao Zhuoer: Entr’acte Rehearsal

SOOFA SUHE is pleased to present Entr’acte Rehearsal, a solo exhibition by emerging artist Tao Zhuoer. The term "Entr’acte" (intermission) here denotes not a pause in the drama, but a state of transition—a threshold where reality has yet to take full command, while the dream has already begun to loosen its grip. The exhibition imagines the space as a theatrical moment yet to conclude—a story that has not ended but is undergoing a profound transformation.

Tao Zhuoer’s practice originates from a familiar sensation: the lucid awareness of dreaming while being unable to wake or alter the plot. She translates this "liminal state of waking" into concrete forms. A girl rooted in the earth is bitten by a small snake, from whose tail plants and tiny figures sprout; a man and a rooster exist in a nested symbiosis, the crowing signaling the dawn before the dream dissolves; the human-headed bird "Ba," inspired by ancient Egyptian mythology, metaphors the wandering and rebirth of the soul. Both real and grotesque, these figures form a collective portrait of the moment before a dream collapses.

In her work, sculpture emerges as a material field mediating between unconscious forces and the order of reality—a site where trauma roots itself downward even as vitality extends upward. This expression, however, is no weightless illusion; through the grain of wood, the softness of fabric, and the cold brilliance of gold leaf, Tao constructs a "displaced symbiosis" of heterogeneous materials.

As the hand of reality reaches into the dream, the monologue of the unconscious continues to echo. The exhibition invites viewers to stand as bystanders to this "controlled loss of control," pausing before these familiar yet uncanny forms to witness how fragments of memory find their own voice through the breath of wood.