eflecting upon the previous two bodies of works shown in the solo exhibitions in 2014 and 2015, Gao presents a new series of paintings that anticipates an opening of a “monochrome” reading. Reoccurring here are Gao’s classic motifs – still-life of skulls and other objects, natural landscapes, statues of ambiguous female figures and scenes of eclectic natures – but the works that are now grey, dim, largely colourless and deliberately rendered in a deadpan fashion, are no longer marked by an overwhelmingly self-sufficiency, and even appear to be conceded, made partial and incomplete. It is however less an expression of Gao’s personal experiences than a long-anticipated exploration of the “colourless”: to Gao, this move into the restrained and restrained field of grey after exploiting the expressive and orgiastic means imposing onto himself and expanding the rules and regulations that he employed when working on canvas. In other words, it experiments with a certain reversion of the relationship between art and life, and flips the logic of the remain upside down.