Born in 1940 in China, Gao Xingjian moved to France in 1987 and became a French citizen in 1998. In 2000, he won international acclaim as the first ethnic Chinese to win the Nobel Prize in Literature for his work, ‘Soul Mountain’. Gao is also an accomplished artist who has exhibited internationally, in USA, Europe and Asia. In 2005, a retrospective exhibition of Gao was held at the Singapore Art Museum. One of Gao’s biggest works, ‘Day and Night’ is a departure from his usual presentation of a lone silhouette against a bare background. Here, several figures are seen moving across a monochromatic landscape; from the palely lit left, through dusk and into the night, on the right. In this work, Gao attempts to communicate the idea of consciousness, defining it in three stages of ‘I’, ‘You’ and ‘He/She’. The figures illustrate a personal journey of self, moving in a circular and never-ending motion.
