Gao Xiang: Seeking an EasternMethod
Gao Xiang is a visual artist, a Ph.D. in Fine Art at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and a scholar of the modern Italian painter Giorgio Morandi. Luo Fei is curator and a visual artist.
Gao: I was very enthusiastic at the time. There was a sense of freshness to it. That experience was very important, and it provided me with inspiration in my painting, spurring me to deal with the relationship between space and painting, with such approaches as painting on Plexiglas.
21 June 2013 , TCG Nordica Gallery
Luo: Since 2005, you have been painting a series of horses on round pieces of Plexiglas.
Luo Fei: I think that you are a unique artist in Yunnan. You paint oil paintings, carry out research, and engage in certain cross- disciplinary, cross-cultural art projects. I remember when I first arrived in Kunming in 2000, you were making installations. Gao Xiang: Right. Before 2000, I created a series of installations. I wanted to make transparent artworks connected to Ming dynasty furniture, which I did using Plexiglas. I was very enthusiastic about installation art at the time, but the artworks cost a lot to make. One table, including materials and labor, cost nearly 20,000 yuan.
Gao: Right. That is in order to explore painting in space. Making installation art brought me in contact with the third dimension, and so I started wondering whether or not painting could also touch space, rather than merely being hung on a wall. I had a good opportunity in 2005, which was to travel to Kirstiansand in southern Norway. It was a contemporary art event to celebrate the centennial of Norway’s independence. Artists from ten countries participated, and I was recommended by Nordica. The organizer wanted us to create outdoor artworks, and I was thinking I could paint on Plexiglas, that it would be really cool to integrate it with the plants in the garden and the sea in the distance. I gained the most that time from working for long periods with Western artists. I learned a lot about Western contemporary art by talking and working with them, and that gave me a true understanding and feeling for their conceptual and performance artworks.
Luo: Did you sell it?
Gao: It has remained in my studio (laughs).
Luo: At the time, there were quite a few Kunming artists engaged in installation and performance art, such as Xiang Weixing, Zhang Chongxia, Ning Zhi and Jiang Jing. It was around the year 2000 that performance and installation art were being spread around China, and a lot of young artists were drawn in. It seemed as if using these mediums gave the artists a critical, independent attitude.
Luo: How do you decide what contemporary art is?
Gao: I think there are many basic factors in contemporary art. It can be judged in terms of time or subject matter, or in terms of the
Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker