GAO BROTHERS

Gao Zhen 1956 Born in Jinan,China, Gao Qiang 1962 Born in Jinan,China

The Gao Brothers are a pair of artist brothers based in Beijing,They have been collaborating on painting, installation, performance, sculpture, photography and writing since the mid1980s. Their work has been exhibited all over the world,and held in private and museums collections,such like China National Museum,Centre Georges Pompidou,The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art,Princeton University Art Museum,etc,in China and across the world.

Removable heads and underground exhibitions are just two of the guerrilla tactics the Gao brothers have employed, often with the help of Melanie Ouyang, their broker, to enable fans and friends to view their work. The Gaos are part of a generation of avant-garde Chinese artists who are pushing the boundaries of artistic expression. In the increasingly open Chinese art world, nudity is commonplace where it used to be forbidden, and art parodying the Cultural Revolution has become so ubiquitous that it is passé. Still, the Gaos are a reminder that, especially as China celebrates the 60th anniversary of the Communist revolution, limits to expression remain: although artists are increasingly free to deal with social and political topics, works that explicitly criticize Chinese leaders or symbols of China are still out of bounds.