 The exhibit was later allowed to re-open on the condition that only professional artists could attend.After waiting for a student visa for five years, Gu came to the United States in 1987, at the age of 32, this journey being his first airplane experience.Asked if he left China for political reasons, he insists that, rather, he wanted to come to New York to seek a more international audience for his art, and to live and work in the contemporary art center of the world.