idea of the artwork or the medium used. There are at least three or four comprehensive factors through which one can judge whether or not something is contemporary art.
Luo: There is a feel to your paintings that is poetic, dream-like and somewhat dramatic. How do these three come together?
Gao: I think it may be connected to my life experience or my artistic experience. For instance, the sense of theater or drama is connected to the Southeast Asian art project I took part in from 2002 to 2004 – the Mekong River Project.
Luo: I remember you painted night scenes for a while.
Gao: Yes, it was called Why Have Night Scenes Become so Alluring? I painted it between 2001 and 2003. I painted this series of night scenes at the same time I was making installations. There were about twenty of them, and they weren’t very big. I was doing a lot of bar-hopping at the time, and I caught a certain feel for the scenes of the night. I wanted to express it.
Luo: Did you do stage design?
Gao: This was a project connected to the National Theater in New York and sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation. Each installment brought together about twenty artists from YDULRXVUHJLRQVDQG¿HOGVVXFKDVGDQFHPXVLFFLQHPDWKHDWHU choreography, folk puppetry,and visual art. For instance, in 2004, I went to Cambodia for a month with famous Yunnan dancer Wen Hui.
Luo: How did you end up painting horses? The horse is a classic form in Chinese traditional painting.
Gao: Right. Many ancient and modern Chinese painters have painted horses, painters such as Xu Beihong and Li Gonglin. It was by chance, however, that I ended up painting horses. One day, when I was painting “dolls,” I suddenly added a horse to the picture. I think it was a subconscious experiment. It felt mysterious. I didn’t really know anything about horses at the time; I was just trying to create the atmosphere of the painting. Of course, now I have painted many of them, and my horses have taken on symbolism. Sometimes it is femininity, sometimes it represents nature and sometimes myself. Luo: In the Dolls series, we always saw the figures of “big women” together with “little men.” I don’t think we ever saw “little women” with “big men.” Why is that? Gao: Actually, much like my decision to paint horses, I didn’t really think about it. It’s just that there were a few times that I painted the men a bit smaller, and it felt interesting. There was WKLVVHQVHRIIUHVKQHVVWKDWLVGLI¿FXOWWRGHVFULEH,WKHQVWDUWHG SDLQWLQJWKHPHQVPDOOHUDQGVPDOOHUDQGLWZDVIXQ,W¿WZLWKWKH feeling I was pursuing.
Luo: What was your role in this?
Gao: They didn’t actually care what I did. I ended up being a part of the performance.
Luo: You performed?
Gao: I can perform if I want, but I don’t think it’s one of my strengths. At first, I was having a lot of trouble, thinking about how to integrate painting into a temporal artwork, so I didn’t know what to do. Later, when they performed, I would sit to the side and paint, using light to project the painting onto a big screen. My painting would change to the music, the dance, and the story, so that they would fuse together in time. These experiences have extended into my painting and now play a role in it.
Luo: Your art has been exhibited internationally quite a bit in recent years. What do Westerners think of your art?
Gao: They mainly think it’s interesting, seeing something they don’t often see.
Luo: What was the feeling?
Gao: Very comfortable, very harmonious, but with latent discord and contradiction. All of my works feel very comfortable and harmonious in terms of color.
Luo: The artist list for your last exhibition in Canada included the Gao Brothers, Zhang Huan, Gu Wenda, and Cao Fei. Their works contain clear social themes.
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