Liu Xiaodong: The River Divides, the World Connects

Liu Xiaodong’s painting has always grown out of lived experience closest to everyday life. He paints the streets of his hometown, the faces of relatives and friends, and the figures of people around him — seemingly ordinary “minor subjects” who, on his canvases, acquire an unprecedented sense of weight. From the grand narratives of the collectivist era to the truthful articulation of personal experience, he brings the presence of the “small self” back to the center of art. This shift, grounded in the scale of real individuals, provides a new measure for tracing the pulse of society and history.

Over more than 40 years of artistic practice, Liu has been deeply shaped by the rigorous training of the academic system, while maintaining an ongoing dialogue with the experimental spirit of contemporary art. He has organically integrated his solid foundation in painting from life with an open, contemporary perspective, and continually refined his brushwork, colour, and composition to create works that possess both technical depth and a sharp engagement with reality.

For Liu, painting from life is like a “sharp blade” that cuts straight to the heart. It is not only about the painter’s improvisational touch, but also a penetrating way of entering society. From small quick sketches to large-scale scenes, he insists on being physically present, sensing the tone of the air, the postures of people, and the atmosphere of the social environment. At the same time, he expands the “information density” of his images through photography, collage, and imaginative scene construction. This practice — interweaving personal experience, social reality, and diverse media methods — has made him one of the most important Neo-Realist painters in the history of contemporary art.

Yet, as the writer Ah Cheng noted in an essay on Liu’s work, “reality is not everything.” In these paintings, reality is not confined to surfacelevel representation; it is transformed into more complex layers of feeling and judgment — at once the intimacy of everyday life and the vastness of society; at once a footnote to individual existence and a testament to collective memory. Through painting, Liu reveals the tension between the real and the unreal, allowing art to be rooted in lived experience while still preserving space to transcend reality.

Over more than 40 years of creation, he has continually moved between his hometown and the wider world, constructing the structure of “The River Divides, The World Connects” with both geographical and psychological significance. Through multiple thematic sections, the exhibition presents how the artist responds to reality through painting, and how the evolution of his brushwork and the construction of his images preserve the atmosphere of the times.

Liu’s works remind us that the significance of art lies not merely in copying or representing reality, but in journeying alongside the world through painting — finding one’s own position between representation and transcendence.