2013年之后，高瑀就没做过个展了。他抖落了一身的尘土，从北京回了重庆，在嘉陵江畔开了家酒吧——“醉先生”。这杯回乡的酒，一喝就是四年有余，喝着喝着，眼看着江对面的龙美术馆就立在那儿了。“要是在江对面做展览，得弄一只LED的熊猫在整栋楼上跑，晚上也是活的。”高瑀下了杯威士忌，吐了句酒话。记得他说这话的时候，江对面便跑出一只熊猫，我定是醉了。
高瑀在重庆的工作室不大，一台落地电风扇就过了夏天。去探望他的时候，两个助手正在完成木刻版画《改造二流子》上墨拓印的部分。木板体量大，刻画复杂，难免有印不匀的地方，助手们万般小心，生怕碰了“高老板”有些强迫症的神经线，又得重新来过。
工作室粗糙、凌乱，不像高瑀身上的精致。他画画时也穿西装马甲，皮鞋锃亮，掉点颜色上去，就是件暴跳如雷的大事儿。这身剪裁恰到好处，紧致地有点不留余地的行头里，到底装了个怎样的灵魂？看着他穿过吵吵嚷嚷的重庆街道，心想，这男人大概离混沌的现实太近，也太远了。
“不现实·二”是高瑀回到重庆的市井生活里独处四年的结果，也是置身于创作的孤岛，重新定位自我的必然。2012年前后，他就开始在中国传统绘画和民间艺术的视觉系统中，寻找建构今天中国意识形态的图像、文本和历史，在宏大的叙事里，把自己安放在置身事外的高度上，大义灭亲——这是当年个展“不现实”上，“大禹治水”、“愚公移山”、“屠龙”建构的世界。
但和2012年“屠龙”的状态不同，高瑀说自己不再是个愤怒的小青年，而是个绝望的中年人。我把这“绝望”看作是他这些年努力的结果——一种沉浸在生活日常中，看到的现世深处的真实。触碰真实，就意味着不得不面对自己，承认不愿承认的现实。对高瑀来说，这“承认”便意味着重大关系的重建——离婚、回归个人创作、对中国意识形态背后复杂因素的深究…….所有的这些，就像少年放下“屠龙刀”，遁入佛门“参话头”式的絮语，都在作品里了。
高瑀说，今天的社会在乔治·奥威尔的《一九八四》 和阿道斯·赫胥黎的《美丽新世界》里同时得到了印证。我们被迫热爱我们未必热爱的东西，我们被迫行使我们未必相信的权利——“暴力控制”和“娱乐至死”的结局一样，人们在“被限制”和“被规划”的双重设计中定义幸福。高瑀从中看到的奇观，有文革时期流行的《鸡血疗法》，也有王式廓笔下的《改造二流子》；有中国航天事业重新书写的“嫦娥神话”，也有互联网时代色情产业带来的慰藉……这些和时代命运相关的信息埋藏于老艺术家的漫画手稿，百姓家里悬挂的日历海报，微博置顶的时事新闻下“极左”或“极右”的争伐，互联网上铺天盖地的直播网红，读不完、删不尽也记不住的微信朋友圈……这是高瑀的日常，也是我们的日常。
相应的，靠近真实的路径不仅在生活，也在创作本身。叙事宏大，高瑀穷尽绘画的方式回应前人的经验。他说，世界从没有什么新鲜，所以选择有着集体记忆的图像和文本介入创作。作品上的文字和画面上的颜料一样重要，它们同时构成了叙事的空间和阅读的体验。高瑀一改过去工匠式精雕细琢的制作工艺，在书法和中国画的轻松中重拾了乐趣。当然，他还选择了其他的方式，比如木刻、木雕、丙烯喷绘、机器人装置等等，照他的话讲，“国、油、版、雕”齐活了。
方法上的多元，并不意味着语言本身的颠覆，虽然这些作品的表面看起来如此不同。构成艺术理解很重要的部分在于，定义经典。在高瑀看来，深入骨髓的阅读和观看，才能形成经典的概念。于他来说，从漫画、连环画、月份牌追溯上去的民间美术里，貌似可以找到这个答案。这些视觉经验不仅影响着哪怕是一根线条的独立的审美，更是今天世界之所以如此的重要佐证。
因为不再像以前那般苛求工艺和细节，也不再执着于语言本身，高瑀过得自在多了。当他赋予月球上的“玉兔号”以生命，便耗费十几万做了一个自己的“玉兔号”机器人；当他需要用丙烯喷出上世纪80年代的画面效果，便请来熟知喷绘的高手一同完成创作；当他需要用素描的质感来呼应“奥威尔”和“赫胥黎”的现实境遇，就在画面上一黑到底；甚至是木雕，都是工人根据一张手稿草图独立完成的…..
在作品《憧憬》里，小男孩趴在草地上看向远方，他的脸有一米六宽。“画的时候一片空白，是虚无的”，高瑀告诉我说。所以当我们在谈论现实中“不现实”的虚无时，是不是亦是一场空？酒后的人容易绝望，而高瑀选择一直醉着话现实。（文／曹丝玉）
After 2013, Gao Yu didn’t have any solo exhibitions. He shaked off the dust, went back to Chongqing from Beijing, opened a bar by the Jialing River “Mr. Tipsy”. This drink about going home, he has drunk more than four years, drinking and drinking, he saw Long Museum standing across the river someday. “If there is an exhibition at the opposite side of the river, it is necessary to get a LED panda to run on the whole building, even alive in the evening.” Gao Yu drunk a glass of whisky, spit this drunk word. When he said that, a panda ran out across the river, I must be drunk.
Gao Yu’s studio in Chongqing is not big, a floor fan could stand the summer. When I visited him, two assistants are completing the inking and rubbing part of the woodcut print painting Reform the Loafers. The wood board has a large volume, the carving is very complex, uneven situation couldn’t avoid, the assistant were very careful, fearing of touching the compulsive nerves of Boss Gao, and have to come over once more.
The studio is rough, messy, not like the delicacy of Gao Yu’s outfit. He wears a suit vest when he paints, with polished shoes, if painting oil drops on it, it will be a big thing with raging fire. In this perfect tailored, compact even without leaving no room outfit, what a kind of soul lives inside? Watching him passing through the noisy streets of Chongqing, I thought, this man is perhaps too close to the chaotic reality, and too far away in the same time.
“Unreality II” is the result of Gao Yu four years’ living along back in Chongqing’s street life, it’s the inevitable self re-positioning in the isolated island of creation. Around 2012, he began to look for the image, text and history consisting China today’s ideology from the visual system of China traditional painting and folk art, in the grand narrative, he placed himself in the dissociated height, righteousness above family loyaty – this is in the former exhibition “Unrealisty”, the world constructed in “King Yu Tamed the Flood” and “Moving Mountains “, “Dragon Slaying”.
But different from the state of “Dragon Slaying” in 2012, Gao Yu said he is no longer an angry young man, but a desperate middle-aged man. I take “despair” as the result of these years of hard work – the reality noticed in the depths of real world by immersing in the daily life. Touching the truth, means to have to face yourself and face up to the fact that you don’t want to admit it. For Gao Yu, this “admission” means the reconstruction of major relationships – divorce, returning to individual creation and the study to complex factors behind Chinese ideology… All these, is like the boy to lay down “Dragon Slayer” knife, and become a Buddha “Investigate a Topic” kind of words, are all in the works.
Gao Yu said, today’s society has been verified in George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Hexley’s Brave New world at the same time. We are forced to love things we may not love, we are forced to exercise the right that we may not believe – “violence control” and “entertainment to death” has the same outcome, people define happiness in the double design of “limited” and “planned”. The wonders that Gao Yu saw from it, has the popular “Chicken Blood Therapy” in the Cultural Revolution, and Wang Shikuo’s “Reforming the Loafers”; the Chang’e myth rewrite by Chinese spaceflight, also the consolation brought by the porn industry in the Internet era… The information related to the times and fate is buried in the old artist’s comic manuscript, the calendar posters hanging in people’s home, the debates and fight about “ultra-left” or “ultra-right” under the top-set current news of Weibo, the live Webcast stars overgrown on the internet, the Wechat circles that can’t read enough, can’t delete them all… This is the Gao Yu’ daily, also our daily.
Accordingly, the path close to reality is not only in the life, but also in the creation itself. The narrative is grand, Gao Yu painting exhausted the way of painting to response to previous experience. He said, that the world has nothing new, so he chooses the image and text in the collective memory to involve in the creation. The text on the work is as important as the paint on the picture, which form the narrative space and the reading experience in the mean time. Gao Yu has changed the past manufacturing process in crafted artisan style, he regains the fun in calligraphy and painting. Of course, he has also chosen other ways, such as woodcut, wood carving, acrylic spray, robot device and so on, in his words, “Chinese painting, oil, print, sculpture” all come in.
Diversification in the method doesn’t mean the subversion of the language itself, even though the looking of these works is so different. An important part of understanding art is the definition of classical. In the eyes of Gao Yu, well ingrained reading and viewing, could build a classic concept. To him, tracing from comic books, picture books and calendar back to the folk art, looks like you can find the answer. These visual experiences not only affect the independent aesthetic of a line, but also the important evidence of why the world looks like this today.
Because no longer demanding process and details like before, also no longer clinging to the language itself, Gao Yu lives much more comfortable. When he gives the Jade Rabbit on the Moon life, it took hundreds of thousands to make his own Jade Rabbit robot; when he needs to use acrylic to spray paint the picture effect of 80s last century, he invited well-known spray painting professionals to complete the creation together; when he needs to use the sketch texture to echo the realistic situation of “Orwell” and “Huxley”, he painted in the picture all the way to the end; and even wood craving, are finished by the workers independently according to a draft manuscript…
In the work Longing, the little boy lying on the grass looks into the distance, his face is 1.6 meters wide. “Total blank when painting, nothing,” Gao Yu told me. So when we talk about the “unrealistic” nothingness in the reality, is it void? People are easy to despair when drunk, and Gao Yu chooses to talk about reality in perpetual drunk.