Man’s true essence is never changed by time and space; otherwise it is not essence.
　　However, under different time or space, people always show characteristics of different age or region.
　　Therefore, any surface phenomenon is temporary and blurry.
　　I feel lucky to live here in the present. When I explore man’s true essence, I see all kinds of lives at the moment. Mixed feelings well up in my heart.
From my personal perspective, I seek the intrinsic connection of the meaning of life through different time and space, while pondering about the value of life.
　　I am lucky because I can capture what I have seen, heard, thought and felt, by demonstrating my existence through art.
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　-----------------Gao Xiaowu
　　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 he gradually developed his unique style. Back in his hometown, Gao 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 that he saw life through rose-colored spectacles. Unlike all the other artists who came to Beijing from other places and struggled to survive, Gao was set apart by his kindness in helping others, humbleness and self-awareness.  There is a tenacious power and ambitious force within his heart that gives him the support in facing all the difficulties that surround him. His distinctive sense of humor is not only revealed in the expression on his face, but also throughout his artwork.
　　His masterpiece, Standard Age, 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” nowadays. Man has experienced the standardized production process of the Industrial Revolution and now entered a digital age of the microelectronics 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 seemingly 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 pressure in human beings today.
　　His 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.  
　　The 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 expressing a standardized smile that is distinctive in Gao’s art. He is dreaming that he could fly high in the sky like an angel. However, in reality, his clumsy body is unwieldy and his little swings can’t 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 wrotes:
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 complains about the current situation. Instead, he is more concerned about the happiness and grief in his own everyday life. He is posturing for his own aesthetic view. Our Generation reflects those who were born in the 1980s who were portrayed as being naïve. It plays with symbolic gestures in a way that makes them feel cool and it goes 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!”
Our Generation 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 the 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 not only a betrothal gift for his dear wife Liu Xiaoying.
　　Gao’s aesthetics fall into the generation of comics and cartoons. He is one of the representative sculptors in the new trend of Animamix Aethetics that the author has been working on. His creations avoid political symbols or totem. Gao and other artists from the 1980s generation have spontaneously returned to the nature of artistic creation, pursuing their own aesthetic display of expressing the interest achieved by content and medium. The international aesthetics they exhibit is different from the generation of Political Pop, which emphasizes Chinese-styles through political motifs.  Most artists of the new generation, including Gao Xiaowu, are narcissistic. Influenced by their environment, they change their creations frequently and invent pictorial symbols for themselves and not for the nation or politics. Gao goes beyond his own pictorial symbols from the early Gao-type smile generated by the exaggerated and ordinary people to the most recently released sleeping couple. Aside from creating the essence from the figures, he also records his love story freely by creating sculptures.
　　Out of the essence of art, we can distinguish the freshness of “the love of life” from Gao Xiaowu’s artworks. Having such talents in expression enable him to make better art.
 

作者：Lu,Victoria