Zou: In your works, women are large and men are small, does this express your understaning of the status of men or raise a question: "Who is the Doll?"
Gao: I'm also puzzled by this. I wanted to pose the question to everyone, especially to myself.
Zou: I think that the women you painted are very pretty and seem to be able to turn men into dolls. More complex questions are perhaps behind the question of who is the doll. As you know, feminism and feminist painting started in the mid-1990s in China. Have your artistic ideas been impacted by this trend or did they develop completely from your own experience? Gao: 80% is based on my own life experience, I'd say. And the cultural background you just mentioned has had an indirect impact as well. Zou: Male artists are in a male-centered position. However, you VHHPHGWRKDYHLPSOLHGVRPHWKLQJHOVH,QDVSHFL¿FVRFLHWDODQG familial structure, a man may be unable to possess the patriarchal power recognized by society, so he becomes psychologically complicated. Therefore, your paintings are unique and interesting because you have considered and expressed this issue through the power relationships between the sexes. In your Who is the Doll? VHULHV\RXSDLGDORWRIDWWHQWLRQWRWKHSV\FKRORJLFDOUHÀHFWLRQ of gender relationships in society. This changed in The Dreams series, in which you focused on your own spirit or something related to the subconscious. Gao: In The Dreams , changes in my mental states at different times would change the relationship between man and horse in the image.
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Zou: The paintings with two horses appear quiet and integrated. Are all of your works like this?
Gao: I think so. Painting two horses feels calmer, and gives the work a sense of poetry.
Zou: What is the relationship between represenations of tranquility and boldness and your life experience? Take, for example, the ¿JXUHVORRNLQJLQWRWKHGLVWDQFH Gao: Figures looking into the distance appear often in my paintings. They represent my hopes for the future, but also a sense of uneasiness. Zou: In art history, represntations of dreams often bring to mind the Surrealism of Dalí. But you do it in a more classic way, paying much attention to brushwork. It is neither figurative nor purely abstract, but it is integrated.. The proportions of the horse and man are strangely modern, which is of course relevant to the theme of dreams that you want to express. Gao: I chose my artistic techniques based on my own personality and the object I wanted to depict. If my technique was too realist, WKHQLWZRXOGQ W¿WZLWKWKHGUHDPOLNHHIIHFW,ZDQWHGWRFUHDWH Zou: When did you begin to make glass installations? I think that these works are most valuable for their thoughts about space, environments, materials, and meanings.
Zou: When you paint two horses, is it because the meaning demands it or because the composition demands it?
Gao: Both. From the perspective of composition, two horses are stronger, but in terms of meaning, a horse may be gentle or terrifying, just like in humans. In my opinion, the horse is an extension of my soul and has a latent female identity, just as you have said.
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