Gao Yang once said the title of “master” will no longer exist for modern artists. It is a name for the past artistic heroes, he said. However, his more than ten years artistic career has presented before us 　　what is a real “master”.
　　Taking a Rational Attitude towards the History of Western and Eastern Art allows Him to Choose Free Heights
　　Among Chinese artists, Gao Yang is an extraordinary one. He has never given up his preference for the easel art. This is not the over-sensitive internal manifestation of an intensely crazy man, but the sober choice made by an artist in the wake of confusion, speculation and awakening.
　　From classic to modern, from modernism to postmodernism, from Cezanne, Picasso to Marcel Duchamp, from art to society, from external appearance to internal feelings – anything that is connected to art and life has been analyzed in detail by Gao Yang. The analyses, like his penetrating writings, are forceful and astonishing. And both Gao Yang’s art and life are based on his rational choice. His profound analyses and firm actions are nothing but awe-inspiring.
　　Gao Yang knows that he has engaged on an arduous road, but like a runaway horse, he enjoys flying in the free heights of art. He has interpreted the detachment of a master by fighting like a dauntless soldier on a bloody battlefield, his war flames spreading to every corner of the world.
　　What Gao Yang knocks down is the non-artistic falsehood and ugliness. Such battles not only took place between him and other players, but also within himself. He has drawn on the experience of old masters of art and searched for answers to perplexities from philosophers. When he can finally read Foucaul, he became a real fearless hero.
　　Breaking the Right of Speech
　　In Gao Yang’s latest works, national art symbols are still nowhere in sight though it has been a routine item for overseas Chinese artists. Here is only the dialogue between materials and the artist. From post-impressionism, expressionism, practice for mixed media, phenomenology human performance to today’s painting device, what Gao Yang addresses has always been the essence of art. Since the day he moved into the Dongcun Village, Gao Yang has chosen to be marginal, determined to break away from routine practice and restart his career.
　　For Gao Yang, the essence of art is the intuitional presentation of soul and life, which is derived from a vow taken by the European expressionism art school: to strictly follow the true feelings of your heart and find the most appropriate art language to express these feelings. This is like a kind of redeeming belief of a disciple, whose faithfulness and sincerity was well proved by the stunning works of Gao Yang which never fail to move you.
　　At home, Gao Yang also chooses to stay marginal and stick to his independence in the margin. When living abroad, Gao Yang remained marginal, in a more radical way. When in China, Gao Yang fought with himself in a bid to get rid of the shackles imposed by culture, and while abroad, he fought against his identity and stood up against the Western power. Confronted with the West’s colonized selection of Chinese art at the World Art Exhibition, Gao Yang held on to his belief, challenging the Westerners’ suspicious eyes with the quintessential spirit of arte povera which has no national symbols. He was shouting to the powerful:
　　“This is art! Art is not limited by national boundaries; art has nothing to do with capital; art is just so pure that it is the only thing that can prove it is art.”
　　The Choice of Arte Povera
　　For Gao Yang, performance art is his cultural destructor while easel painting is the Garden of Eden. He chose poverty, poor materials and poor model, but his spirit has added a touch of grandeur to the kind of poverty.
　　During the years studying art overseas, Gao Yang got a deep perception of the so-called “creativity” in the West, and came to know that the over-stretched and meaningless creation will in the end lead to a state of “nothingness”. After a profound reflection on the implications of “creativity”, Gao Yang did not choose to extend his creativity to excessive fields or the ridiculous move of interpreting 100 years in ten years initiated during the 85 New Trend. Gao Yang's creations are based on the inheritance of traditions and his past experience. He once said, "only by inheritance can an art language be created." He has a deep perception that the postmodern art in the West will lead art to a state of philosophical meditation, but won't retain anything physical. Even in an era dominated by capital manipulation, Gao Yang is not blindfolded by the chaos. He has a firm belief in what he does because he has kept a sober head all the time.
　　With a clear head, Gao Yang chose the “art povera” and out of his lover for his marginal identity, he has used poor materials as a weapon. Through a variety of painting devices, Gao Yang seems to have installed a mouth to the rubbish of a city. Like a group of beggars rising from the ground, they let you to feel the sincerity and passion in the depth of their eyes.
　　Gao Yang falls in love with rubbish, materials and the discarded mess. He is like an old man picking up the trash left behind by civilization. He cared for them and added a touch of wisdom to them. The "arte povera" enables us to reflect -- on the wastefulness of the industrial and post-industrial society, on which philosophers and sociologists have made profound analyses. In the information age and mass consumption age, the media, while helpful in building fashion and stimulating consumption, has also encouraged waste. It is squandering that gives people "taste" and "status", which is degrading compared with the ancient times when people cared more about spirit and internal cultivation.
Trough his art, Gao Yang is fulfilling the mission of an artist rather than an intellectual, but he has proved that such an artist can never be replaced by an intellectual. He has enabled "rubbish" to talk and "waste" to resist. He has turned the thoughts of philosophers into images, directly touching people with intuition rather than logic.
　　Just like his art, Gao Yang is poor -- to such an extent that only his art and passion are left with him. In the mean time, he is rich because his works will become an extension and witness of his life. Those works, as Gao Yang said, are staring at us, enabling us to see the deceptive truth and the power of human thinking that exists anywhere at any time. This is a fortune more precious than any physical materials. As a saying goes, "heroes are born out of current affairs", Gao Yang is a hero carrying a sharp hatchet, poised to blaze a trail with his fearless spirit.