毛锎70年代生人，生于中国湖南，后转至广州。艺术专业出身。

　　青年时期跨于驾轻就熟的摄影以及广告业。早年具备了良好的绘画技巧，但未有作品问世，毛锎戏称，那是他的卧薪尝胆时期。2010年起作品开始流于公众。

　　若以2010年为元年，毛锎的艺术创作生涯大约分为三个阶段。

　　2010-2014年，此些年间毛锎在从广告行业跨入艺术界后，他果断地放弃了特别广告的观念艺术，而是倡导回归以技艺为主导的传统油画。

　　2014-2015年，此些年毛锎作出了充满颠覆和魔幻主义色彩的小西游系列，充满克制、寓言气息的理念逐渐建立并趋向高度统一。

　　2015-2017年，此次高等动物个展的作品大约都出自这个时期，此些年毛锎开始逐步扩展自己的艺术品类，在统一的美学风格下让绘画和雕塑遥相呼应。

　　毛锎坦言受亨利·卢梭以及萨尔瓦多·达利影响颇深，并延伸出自己一套超现实主义的方法论。毛锎的高等动物系列兼具两位大师的一些特点。毛锎的笔触清晰细腻，像卢梭一样，他的画中一种绝对的清晰感，这种绝对的清晰反而导致了一种绝对的神秘感。另外在绘画语言上毛锎更倾向于生活化的描述，运用写实手段，刻画那些离奇的形象和写实的细节，像达利一样，他的画作会产生一种幻觉与梦境。不过毛锎的画作更趋于平和，静谧以及稳重少有达利的轻狂、怪诞以及撕裂感，也比卢梭的画作多了一份成熟与距离感。

　　毛锎的高等动物系列是清新、优雅、时尚、诗性、极具美感的。善用亮色，追求明快。而且细看之下，毛锎的画又是有批判性的。但他的批判性并不同于我们所熟知的中国60一代艺术家，如曾梵志，岳敏君，方力钧等。60一代艺术家因为经历了中国集体主义时代，画作多以描述群体行为以及群体的空间感从而达到某种批判。而毛锎生于70年代，生长在中国个人自由主义意识兴起的时代，他的作品里的对象多为拥有绝对自由个人空间的孤独的人或物，从细节和神态对于个体进行剖析从而完成批判。

　　毛锎的作品背景多是风景，开放式的空间，人物衣着复古，或者半赤裸，充满了独立，审慎，自由的气质，在画作中你很难察觉到人类工业文明的成果。毛锎早年经营于工业化程度极高的广告业，但是毛锎却避开了对于工业文明的描述与追逐，增多了一份避世的意味。而高等动物的雕塑可以看作是同一美学下的延伸，材质以金属为主，当抽离掉画作中的色彩以及背景之后，以钢筋筑人，雕塑如同生活在钢筋森林里的人类，它们只能传达情绪，无法完成交流，增添了一份哥特式的哀伤。

　　毛锎对于人或动物的塑造是克制的，克制到如果不是高耸的脖颈，你很难察觉他的画是超现实主义。毛锎的节制同样产生了一种间离感，观众得以一种保持距离态度看待画作中的人与物。将观众置于上帝视角去审视和思考画作中高耸脖颈的意义。

　　人类在地球上亿年的历史中，一直处于食物链的中下端，后来通过解放双手，扩充脑容量，并产生文明继而在食物链上超车站在顶端。毛锎给我们抛出了几个问题，高傲的人类愈来愈骄傲，眼高于顶，而动物直立脊椎完成拟人化，那么它们与人类的差异何在?

　　高等动物充满了对于人类过去与未来的辨思，横亘在画作之中的是一部毛锎为我们书写的人类简史。

　　毛锎是一个拒绝定义自己的艺术家，从而完成了对于几个行业的横跨，几种艺术概念的攀爬，从而步履不停,前途将将在望,后会徐徐可期.

　　Giorgio Grasso

　　意大利著名艺术评论家、艺术史学家、社会活动家、MAG 画廊艺术总监，FAC 意大利当代艺术基金会负责人,策展人。策划了DOLOMITI国际艺术双年展(2016)，EXPO世博当代艺术展(2015)，威尼斯艺术双年展意大利国家馆等意大利国内及国际艺术展。

　　英文版：

　　Arrogancy and Elegancy

　　-Methodology of Kai Mao's work

　　Kai Mao was born in Hunan province (China) in 70s, and later he transferred to Guangzhou province and majored in art.

　　He was engaged in photography and advertising design in youth ages. He has good painting skills in early years, but works didn't come out. Kai Mao said in jest that it was his hardship period. His works began to appear in public’s eyes since 2010.

　　If the year 2010 was the first year of an era, Kai Mao's artistic career was divided into three periods. Kai Mao transferred from advertising design into the art world in 2010 – 2014. Then he decisively gave up the advertising-oriented art from: conceptual art, and he advocated to return to the art-oriented traditional oil painting.

　　Kai Mao made a series of Journey to the West that was full of the color of subversion and magic in 2014-2015. The idea that was full of restraint and fable gradually established and tended to a high degree of unity.

　　His works of the Superior Animal Exhibition were appeared in 2015 – 2017. In this period, Kai Mao began to gradually expand his own art category and combined painting and sculpture in a unified aesthetic style.

　　Kai Mao said frankly that he was influenced by Henry Rousseau and Salvador Dalì deeply. So he extended his own set of methodology: Surrealism. Kai Mao's Superior Animal series combined the features of the two mentors. Kai's brush strokes were clear and delicate, just like Rousseau, his paintings was full of an absolute sense of clarity, and this absolute clearance led to an absolute sense of mystery. In addition, in the painting language, Kai is more inclined to the description of life. He used realistic means to describe the bizarre image and realistic details, like Dalì, his paintings produced a kind of illusions and dreams.

　　But Kai Mao's paintings tend to be more peaceful, quiet and stable. And his paintings have few frivolous, grotesque and tearing sense like Dalì. Moreover, his paintings have more sense of mature and distance than Dali.

　　Kai Mao's Superior Animal series is fresh, stylish, poetic and highly aesthetic. Moreover, he makes good use of bright colors.

　　And under the scrutiny, Kai’s painting is critical. But his critique is different from our well-known Chinese artists in 60s, such as Zeng Fanzhi, Yue Minjun, Fang Lijun and so on. The paintings of the artists in 60s described the behavior of groups and groups of space to achieve a certain criticism, because they were born in the era of Chinese collectivism. However, Kai was born in the 1970s when the personal liberal consciousness rose in China. The objects in his works are more lonely people or things that have absolute free personal space. He often analyzes the individual from the details and the demeanor to complete the critique.

　　The most of Kai's work background is scenery and open space. The people in his works dressed in retro style or in semi-naked style and were full of independent, prudent, free temperament. In his paintings, you are difficult to detect the results of human industrial civilization. In the early ages, Kai was engaged in the advertising design that has a high degree of industrialization, but Kai avoided the description of industrial civilization and chase and more to describe the meaning of masquerade. The sculpture of superior animals can be seen as an extension of the same aesthetics. The material is mainly metal, and when the painting separated from color and background, he painted people with a steel bar, and the sculpture is like the human beings living in the reinforced forest, they only can convey emotions and can not complete the communicate. This style added a sense of Gothic sadness.

　　When Kai Mao shaped the animal, he was restrained. If it was not tall towel, it was difficult to detect that her painting is surrealism. Kai's restraint also produced a sense of separation, so the audience looks at the paintings filled with a sense of distance. He put the audience in the perspective of God to examine and think about the meaning of the tall neck in the painting.

　　Mankind has been in the middle and lower stages of the food chain over the years in the earth. Later, through the liberation of hands, expanding brain capacity, and producing civilization, mankind overtake at the top of the food chain. Kai Mao gave us a few questions: mankind is more and more arrogant and they often have grandiose aims but puny abilities but the animals’ vertebra are upright and complete anthropomorphic, then are there any differences between human and animals?

　　The superior animals are filled with a reflection of the past and the future of mankind, which is a brief history of mankind written to us by Kai Mao.

　　Kai Mao is an artist that has no definition for himself. He went across several industries and climbed several artistic concepts. Perhaps surprise is at the next intersection.

　　Giorgio Grasso

　　Art critic, art historian, curator of MAG gallery, founder of contemporary art foundation. his has curated the Armeria pavilion in the biennial of Venice 2017, the biennial of Dolomiti 2016, co-curated by the Italian pavilion at the Venice Biennial  2011.