Usually painting from life is done within a controllable canvas, facing the human figure or landscape, and painting an objective physical picture with consistent light and atmosphere. I chose a large canvas of 260 cm x 1000 cm, laid it on the ground and painted the physical picture before my eyes. Being bodily in it, I could not control the entire surface in any way, and there was no way I could complete the material image in the same light and atmosphere within the limited time. In my race against time, I painted the human figures at noon, and it was already late afternoon when I painted the landscape behind them. As I refuse to use the pointers with which photography could assist me, I expose myself to the temporal changes of every second in the real world. As in farming, there is mud, there is sweat, and there is confusion of time. I squeeze the colors directly onto the canvas, and directly mix them to paint the specific figure in front of my eyes, breaking down the abstract borders and speciousness between colors and the specific figure.

(Liu Xiaodong, About Hotbed, 2006[Selected])

Different from traditional realism, painting from life is no longer an exercise in memory and technical devices, but is a process of constant contact and dialogue with the object. Accordingly, neither Liu Xiaodong nor the young generation he represents negate ‘realism’. On the contrary, their work should be regarded as a contemporary transformation of realism. In the same way, their rediscovery of drawing from life is not against the conservatism of photography and video, but is the great struggle by painting in the attempt to recall its character and meaning in an age of mechanical reproduction. If the problem that Hotbed refracts is that of individual existence in the wave of urbanization, the means used by the artist to realize his devices and conceptions is to toss himself and us the unavoidable question, namely “what can painting do today?”

(Pi Li, Some Key Words about Hotbed, 2006[Selected])