Gao Xiaowu was born in 1976 in Sanming, Fujian Province and graduated in 1999 from the Department of Sculpture at the Xiamen Academy of Arts and Crafts in Fujian. He then lived in the Xiamen Special Economic Zone for eight and a half years. Unlike other artists, he had an early exposure to the rapid social transformation, impact from the economic development, disparity between the rich and the poor, and struggles among ordinary people. Such changes in the environment and the arduous struggle of life stimulated his observation of the surroundings. Hence, his inspiration for artistic creation is conveyed through his inner emotion, pressure, and rigidity.
Relocating to Beijing from Fujian was a turning point in Gao Xiaowu’s artistic life. In 2004, he graduated from the Department of Sculpture at the Central Academy of Fine Arts and gradually developed his unique style. Back in his hometown, he used to be engaged in the creation of public sculptures and other multimedia sculptures, which helped him develop his skills and technique. He became famous in Beijing for his Standard Age series, which illustrated what he saw of life through rose-colored spectacles. Unlike all the other artists who came to Beijing from other places who struggled to survive, Gao was set apart by his humbleness and self-awareness, kindness in helping others. There is a tenacious power and ambitious force within his heart that gives him support in facing all difficulties. His distinctive sense of humor is not only revealed in the expression on his face, but also throughout his artwork.
His masterpiece, Standard Age, which Gao began in 2004, depicts the ingratiating greeting posture of two male and one female white-collar employees who are smiling at each other, ear to ear. It is a sketch created for the people around him. Standard Age is what he considers the “Computer Age.” Man has experienced the standardized production process of the Industrial Revolution and has now entered the digital age of the microelectronic revolution. Man’s thinking has also been formatted. The more developed and modernized a society is, the more restriction it will face due to “standardization”: from the standardization of products in the Industrial Revolution to the standardization of human behavior in the microelectronics revolution. The idea of standardization is spread universally. Even the apparent noble class of white-collar workers could not escape the standardization of human behavior. They must also show the standard service behavior with a servile or obsequious bow and smile. Gao believes that the root cause is the overwhelming restrictions on standardized behavior that triggers the pressures in human beings today.
Gao Xiaowu’s figurative statues illustrate the standard posture and smile, which constitutes his standardized pictorial symbols and facial expressions. It is his pictorial language that affects the hearts of the common people during the rapid economic development in China. His Standard Age series depicting three white collar workers with humorous and playful expressions bending over quickly garnered much attention shortly after its making. In 2006 I invited this piece to be exhibited at the 18 Gallery at Bund 18 in Shanghai. However, as the doors of success were opening for Gao Xiaowu, the unforeseen result was an overwhelming and disastrous amount of copycats and counterfeits of his work. This sort of familiar and approachable imagery had captured the attention of profit seeking, unworthy businessmen. From its creation in 2004, Standard Age had become the victim of an unbridled flood of imitation and piracy. Although Gao Xiaowu had won one lawsuit of unlawful copyright infringement, the vast extent of counterfeited artworks both inside and outside China was far too great to be reined in. The most hateful aspects of the situation are the devious businessmen who, in an effort to avoid copyright infringement lawsuits, would modify the design to become unbearably ugly. This sort of low-level pastiche is what causes the most damage to the artist. Since Gao Xiaowu’s court case victory against the counterfeiters in 2008, the problem of piracy remains unchanged, and inferior reproduction has become increasingly prevalent. From the Mainland China coast to Xinjiang, the copycats have spread to Southeast Asia and Europe. The geographical extent of the counterfeits is tremendous, even unprecedented, and the scope of unscrupulous forgery has come to a point of outrageousness. This sort of sham, poor-quality imitation must be stopped, as it is a serious and devastating blow to the artist’s reputation.
Gao Xiaowu’s City Dreams series attempts to break through the constraints of standardized behavior, in which the body of a pipsqueak expands into a big balloon with a pair of small wings and with a standardized smile that is distinctive in Gao’s art. He dreams he could fly high in the sky like an angel, but in reality, his clumsy body is unwieldy and his little wings cannot support its weight. This represents the helplessness of those living in the metropolitan area, but they never give up their dreams even if that means their dreams conflict with reality. Gao writes:
Everyone is born naive and romantic.
There is nothing more beautiful in the world than this.
Men created civilizations,
And cities.
Meanwhile, we are distancing away from our most beautiful human nature.
If the dream I had in my childhood when I was in the countryside was the city,
Then the dream I had dreamt while I was in the city was the countryside.
I am busy and tired.
I live in the real world.
From Standard Age to City Dreams to Our Generation, these series of artworks are not only based on the lives of ordinary people living in the city, but also serve as an exploration of his own identity. Although he was born in the 1970s, his artistic creation resembles those who were born in the 1980s. He does not try to express ambitious aspirations that concern the country nor complain about the current situation. Instead, he is more concerned about the happiness and grief in his everyday life. He is posturing for his own aesthetic view. Our Generation reflects those who were born in the 1980s who were portrayed as naïve. It plays with symbolic gestures in a way that makes them feel cool, going beyond gender and race. In Gao’s words: “We are the blog-generation. By speaking several languages, taking various postures, displaying different types of identities and in assorted manners, we are able to develop numerous talents, play international jokes, dream of countless cities, and use the universal slangs “OK! Hello! Bye-bye! Thank you! No!”
The Our Generation series seems to show Gao’s late adolescence. He is liberated from the constrained mood of self-mockery, and simply interprets the desire for communication when boys are in puppy love. That is humorous, relaxing and uncritical. In his 2007 series Fell Asleep, he disclosed the reason why his creation has changed: Gao Xiaowu is in love! He can’t help laughing out happily, and eventually he gets married with his heroine in Fell Asleep. The sleeping position is a metaphor for being able to go beyond the real world, and the sleeping status is a pure state without disturbances from worldly pursuits. Fell Asleep is a betrothal gift for his dear wife.
In 2007 when I was making preparations for the Moon River Art Museum in Tongzhou of Beijing, Gao Xiaowu was one of the first residents participating in the artist residency. At that time, he was already becoming aware of the damage to his work caused by the rising counterfeit problems. For the normally honest and tolerant Gao, these issues undoubtedly took a toll on his emotions. His artistic style also took an increasingly critical angle, a distinct change from the former humorous banter and metaphors of the city dweller to criticize social reality. The creation of Soft Violence in 2007 was a reflection on the automotive industry’s effect on the environment. While cars have provided convenience and mobility to drivers, they always invade a person’s space, its exhaust causing harm to people’s physical and mental health, as well as the environment. Irresponsible drivers have threatened the lives and safety of others. In regards to automobile’s place in today’s society of enhanced purchasing power and industrialization, the unending mass production and widespread use of automobile vehicles, Gao Xiaowu says, “While servicing the people, cars also consume resources, pollute the environment, cause anxiety, and strip people of their lives and health.” Gao notes, “Cars are the modern trap. It is one of the most damaging of all forms of soft violence.” Through perspectival techniques of painting, Gao’s towering stacked up cars appear to be touching the sky, its bright red also seems to refer to the red of animal organs or human limbs stacked high into a mountain overflowing with carnality. While automotive development has brought about convenient and comfortable mobility, it has in fact polluted human being’s living environment at an unprecedented rate.
In 2009, Walk Upright Monument was exhibited in my Animamix Biennial II at the Today Art Museum in Beijing. The ability to walk upright marks the distinction between human and ape. After thousands of years of evolution, at the height of scientific and technological development, humankind and society are now experiencing monumental changes. The relationship between man and nature has become increasingly alienated and distant, and humans have become heavily reliant on tools. What had been the most natural abilities for man, such as walking, running, and other forms of physical exercise, are now weakened and degraded, up to a point where walking has become a daily burden for some. There are even those who are considered to be in a “sub-healthy” state. This so-called “evolution” and “development” cause people to slowly lose their sense of self and become distanced from nature. Gao Xiaowu erects this monument of the upright walking ape to alert us to the acceleration of human alienation.
Symbols of divinity and authority, dragons and lions have always been totems venerated by the Chinese people and are often made into statues of worship or for protection against evil. Yet, in today’s society, everything is about the pursuit of materialism, money is put before all else, and entities such as God or spirituality are no longer taken seriously. Gao Xiaowu appropriates these highly revered, auspicious animals – the dragon and the lion - from traditional Chinese culture, and recreates them into cute, chubby, tamed, cartoon-like forms. Made in 2011, Pet God-Dragon & Pet God- Lion depicts a dragon and lion stepping down from the altar, as humankind no longer pays homage to them, has any need for them. Instead, mankind only strives for materialistic satisfaction and spiritual apathy. In addition, dogs are considered to be highly domesticated animals and obedient to their human owners. In Pet God-Dog, Gao Xiaowu uses the image of the smiling, bowing dog as a metaphor to demonstrate that in our viciously cutthroat and ruthless society, human’s servility is not unlike the dog, as material and power are the ultimate incentive, and our pettiness, helplessness, and shameless conduct can even be beneath a dog’s behavior. Gao’s Pet series is meant to alert us to this reality.
2011 was a very busy year for Gao Xiaowu who was concentrating on the state of human survival in his artwork at this time. In Discrepancy a Zen people sitting in the meditative position of the Buddha on a screw, a symbol of the industrialized world, a gyrating visual form standing erect. The ground is a sand covered base made into a spiral, signifying those who have lost control of themselves and are caught in the whirlpool of modern industrialization. Gao Xiaowu believes that we are currently in a highly industrialized era of information technology, the rapid development of the material world swallows up its inhabitants, rendering humans incapable of resistance, anxious and distressed. This sort of living environment can be called a “field.” How do we as humans live in this so-called “field” Gao Xiaowu places this meditating figure on the rotating screw, the juxtaposition of action and stillness appearing to be contradictory. However, what Gao wishes to suggest is that though we are born within this highly industrialized world that is gradually drifting away from nature, we must find a balance between attachment and detachment, a source of spiritual comfort in this poised, placid field.
Model is a small installation piece in which Gao Xiaowu places a model room inside of a skull, displaying a collection of modern society, apartment, furniture, and facilities all in the pursuit of standardization, connoting the idea that uniformity is beautiful. While in the past human dwellings were in union with nature, freely spaced cottages, shorter buildings, and courtyards, residential spaces have since become high-density, concrete apartment buildings. Thus, standardization has stifled nature, and in the pursuit of happiness we are “imprisoned” by our desires, always in a state of erosion caused by the soft violence. Gao Xiaowu utilizes the skull as a metaphor for those who live within this state of standardized, comfortable and high profile lifestyle, unaware that they have been swallowed. This person is no longer a live individual, and what is left are only the material elements. Model is Gao Xiaowu’s critique on the flourishing real estate market and its irony.
Emotionally, Gao Xiaowu has experienced much distress due to the piracy of his work. Waste reflects that, within the vast sea of information, we are constantly absorbing large amounts of information, an unending flow of material. Whether it is mental or material absorption, we are in an over-saturated state of data. This unprecedented expansion of human desire causes people to lose self-control and fall to vague or disorderly systems of value, in which right and wrong, what to do and what not to do, are confused and blurred. With the installation named Waste, Gao expresses the idea that excretion is more important than absorption, reminding those who are lost within the inundation of material to remember to “empty oneself!”
Originally, Gao Xiaowu had intended to create a series of works, Fate, especially for the traveling exhibition I was curating for the Venice Biennale, Future Pass. However, due to the tight timeline, the series wasn’t able to be completed in time, so instead we decided to include an older piece for the traveling exhibition from Venice, Rotterdam, Taichung, and to the Today Art Museum in Beijing. Finally, Fate – Love has caught up with the exhibition. Having since become a father, in the face of common food safety problems and the increasingly serious environmental issues in recent years, Gao Xiaowu observes his child growing up and all its details, as well as society’s sense of anxiousness and restlessness. He believes that in today’s society, no one is able to make it on his own, so he depicts a large hand supporting a cute baby, demonstrating compassion toward humanity and hope, but still hinting at the apprehension he feels about this world that is so full of soft violence. Fate – Chromosome is a reaction to how each of us carries a genetic history. Much like life, we are unable to choose what kind of genetic lineage we come from, as most of it has already been decided for us. From birth to death, everyone is mired within the entire world’s “chromosome,” threats surround us constantly. With no lack of complex, multi-layered problems, we can only passively accept this reality. To live is to be a part of society’s “chromosome,” from generation to generation. Gao Xiaowu uses the curtain to protect the adorable and innocent infant, the red symbolizing society’s guise of soft violence, strong and quietly subversive mass destruction. The growth of the child must repeatedly withstand soft violence’s imperfect processes.
The “Rebirth” Serie, gradually launched in 2015, is the brand-new breakthrough of Gao Xiaowu’s creation line, also one of his most outstanding masterpieces. With a mild and benign method, he has extricated himself from his diagrammatic symbolic “Previous Life” that was largely pirated and copied. His “Rebirth” sticks to the animal theme in our nature, like deer, turtles, fish, dragonflies and bumble bees, presenting the alienated and illusive lives via the transforming methods like enlarging, exaggerating and analogizing. Gao Xiaowu describes his work as below:
“I used to create my artwork based on my personal emotions, and the main body of my creation is human being, focusing mostly on the feelings of daily life, and judging the society based on my personal experiences. If it was the emotional abreacting in my previous creation, now it is to wake up the initial nature via Rebirth, that is, to wake up the original dreaming and longing of human being towards nature via the poetic and peaceful forms, and via the more colorful and illusive forms generated. Hence, we walk towards a greater care. We can’t see the direct critics that is full of visual violence, neither can we feel the discomfort under the heavy pressures. Instead, with connotation of Reborn, we are trying to explore the life meanings of human being under different time and space, and the ultimate connection with the nature cycle, then to introspect the value of our life.”
Gao Xiaowu used to present the reality and hard life of our civic culture, using comparative simple diagrammatic languages. Then he developed his artwork into the brand-new “Rebirth” series. With the rich colors and complicated forms that he purposely created and were apparently seen by people, he’s been focusing more on the changes and details of the texture presented by the raw material. The graceful and magnificent forms seen by naked eyes are actually the introspection of Gao Xiaowu on how science affects human society. With all the transforming in our nature brought by technologies, he has witnessed the environmental changes on earth, the changes in the ways of how people live, and the big changes of the biomorphs and growing processes of the lives around us. In order to meet human being growing needs of goods, and to get a faster speed and a higher productivity, science and technologies are growing vastly and directing human behaviors. Even though the initial motive of human being is great to transform our nature, while are we developing towards the direction of “evolution” or not, with all that is happening now? Or we are just “alienating” or “retrograding”? Those beauties pursued and created by human, are they purely beneficial with no harm? Is there any hidden danger among them? In our today’s life that science can’t explain every truth of our universe and our nature, the “Rebirth” series of Gao Xiaowu is the exploration of the previous questions. It is the normal state of his life, as well as the core spirit of Gao Xiaowu’s creation, to relentless search for the ultimate nature of life among the ordinary topics, thus to face the ultimate truth and to return to true-self again and again, never to forget “initial aspiration”, then finally to present “initial self”.
Gao Xiaowu’s artwork is always distant from political symbols and totems, and it is instead trying to return to the intrinsic quality of art creation. He focuses on presenting his own taste, and his personal appreciation of beauty, as well as the interesting qualities generated by the content of his artwork after processed by raw material and the media. The international aesthetic temperament presented by his artwork is unlike the way how the generation of Political Pop emphasized the Chinese Style via the political diagrams. From his early artwork like the Gao’s style smiling diagrams depicting the life of small potatoes, to his later artwork “Falling Asleep”, Gao Xiaowu has come to a creation state that is widely open in every way in 2011. He has bypassed his own diagrammatic symbols, then started to create a sculpted artwork with various media, raw materials and forms, trying to record and reflect the time and era he lives via his sculpture creations in every possible way. Besides the art essence of his artwork, we can see the fresh power of “Love of Life” in his “Rebirth” series newly created by Gao Xiaowu. This natural and strong presentation has led his artwork into a next level with infinite limit.
However, why would the artwork of Gao Xiaowu’s be vastly pirated and copied? The real charm of his artwork is not limited to the forms of the art. He is one of the contemporary artists who knows the best of how to invite people to join his art. The simple spirit, that his art is to serve the people, is the highest presentation of his creation value. Hence, not only from the aspect of art pondering, but also from the selection of exhibitions, Gao Xiaowu keeps experimenting the model of how he interacts and communicates with the society in different public settings. His artwork would focus on the aspect of his personal emotions, and then record his thoughts and feelings in different stages of his life. He has turned life itself into art, and presented his deep care and exploration of life via his sculpture. He’s been thinking the value of human and the meaning of life via the method of art. So in this way, Gao Xiaowu is not only a farmer who’s been ploughing hardly and endlessly on the earth of the art, but also a visual poet who’s facing and pondering deeply of our life and the universe.