Exhibition View

Taikang Art Museum presents The River Divides, The World Connects in Beijing, which is Liu Xiaodong’s most systematic and comprehensive solo presentation to date, bringing together more than 70 original works created from the late 1970s to 2025, forming a condensed portrait of his over-four-decade artistic trajectory. Structured around two parallel threads—“East of the River / West of the River” and “What to Paint / How to Paint”—the exhibition approaches Liu’s work from both geographical and spiritual, thematic and methodological perspectives. Through the interweaving of time and space, it reveals the artist’s continuous process of renewal and reinvention between lived reality and the act of painting.

Exhibition View

The River Divides, The World Connects (East of the River, West of the River) is a symbolic proposition that structures Liu’s artistic practice—referring not only to geographical crossings but also to the countercurrents of spirit and time. “East of the River” represents homeland and roots; “West of the River” signifies the distant elsewhere and the wider world. The former embodies the sedimentation of emotion and memory, while the latter points to the expansion of experience and method. Over more than 40 years, Liu has journeyed back and forth between these two banks, continually moving and turning back, forming a self-circulating realist methodology: what he paints and how he paints both arise from the palpable presence of human beings situated in time and space.

Exhibition View

The gallery on the ground floor focuses on the “world,” from the Three Gorges region to the Yanan cave dwellings, from the snowy streets of Detroit to the endless Taihang Mountains, and from “West of the River” extending to the distance, showcasing Liu’s socially driven creations derived from different regions. While the gallery on the second floor directs toward the “ego” and the surroundings that sustain himself. From Pastoral (1989) to Mother (2020), the emotional undercurrents of “East of the River” support him in preserving the warmth of individuals, families, and friends through his paintings. The progression between the galleries guides visitors from the vast scenes of the world to the inner world of the artist.

Pastoral, Oil on linen, 1989, 170×120cm

Courtesy of the private collector

Exhibition View

Unlocking the Door to Understanding the World by Portraying “People”

Three self-portraits by Liu Xiaodong from 1983, 1986, and 2008 are displayed side by side from the very beginning of this exhibition. The earliest self-portrait reflects his naive exploration of himself when he first encountered art. The more recent self-portraits at the end of the exhibition, such as Self-Portrait in the Black Earth Pit (2020) and Self-Portrait in the Kitchen (2021), reveals the profound and clarified experience that the artist has gained over the years. Also, they outline the retrospective of the artist himself through a circular narrative structure.

Exhibition View

Self-Portrait in the Black Earth Pit, Oil on linen, 2020, 244×183cm

From the late 1980s to the early 1990s, Liu broke away from the paradigm of academic realism and began to reinterpret painting through the immediacy of everyday life. Works such as Yawning Male Nude, Rest, Joke, and Distracted Boy exemplify the transformation he underwent during this period. The figures in his paintings were no longer idealized symbols, but real individuals wrapped in time and emotion. His brushwork became more relaxed, his compositions acquired greater on-the-spot tension, and the rational discipline of Aacademic training began to merge with the rhythms of lived reality on the canvas. During this period, Liu became central to the discourse surrounding the “New Generation” painters. Through a distinctly personal perspective, he responded to the new realist questions emerging in the early years of China’s social transformation. White Fatty (1995) became a pivotal work in this phase of exploration. It signaled the maturation of his painterly language and brought him to the attention of the international art world.

Yawning Male Nude, Oil on linen, 1987, 80×130cm

Courtesy of Painting Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts

Rest, Oil on linen, 1988, 138×120cm

©TAIKANG COLLECTION

Distracted Boy, Oil on linen, 1991, 130×97cm

Courtesy of the private collector.

White Fatty, Oil on linen, 1995, 250×150cm

Art historian Wu Hung has described Liu Xiaodong’s work as “painting in action”—a work that is at once an artwork and a process, one that preserves the energy generated in the encounter between action and reality. In such actions, the pivot of Liu Xiaodong’s creations always centers around “people”. The artist approaches the life state of individuals to get closer to a certain truth behind the social scenes.

Exhibition View

Action and Reality: Moving the Studio to the Site

Liu Xiaodong creations underwent a fundamental shift after 2000. He gradually moved from contemplative observation in his studio to direct engagement on-site, and from “personal narratives” of his friends and family to exploring contemporary issues. This transformation is reflected not only in the expansion of subjects but also in the innovation of “how to paint”. By combining photographs with on-site experiences and “bringing the studio to the scene”, sketching for him has evolved from a means of painting into a site of reflection.

Youngsters, Oil on linen, 2000, 200×200cm

Courtesy of the private collector in Asia.

Heroes from Youngsters (2000) is a typical example of his exploration during this period. It was inspired by the film Beijing Bicycle directed by Wang Xiaoshuai. Liu Xiaodong combined multiple on-set photos into a single painting, with a wall dividing the image into male and female sections. Beneath the bright colors lies a subtle gloom, not the usual vitality associated with traditional youth themes, but rather a sense of confusion in growing up and the weight of reality, challenging people’s conventional perceptions of “youth”.

Exhibition View

Hotbed No.1, Oil on linen, 2005, 260×1000cm

Three Gorges: New Migrants (2004) and Hotbed No. 1 (2005) marked a fundamental turning point in Liu’s creative methodology. In 2002, he traveled to the Three Gorges region for on-site research, and later completed Three Gorges: New Migrants in Beijing. Inspired by Li Gonglin’s Chart of the Confluence of Seas, the work adopts a V-shaped composition to depict the Three Gorges landscape after the reservoir was filled. Although the painting reflects his engagement with contemporary reality, it still retains the indirectness of “painting from photographs”, leaving a certain distance between painting and reality. In 2005, inspired by the writer Ah Cheng, Liu decided to “move the studio to the site”. On the ruins of the old town of Fengjie, he unfurled a ten-meter scroll, painted continuously under the scorching sun for more than ten days, and completed the ten-meter monumental work Hotbed No. 1. The significance of this work lies not only in the social dimensions of its subject matter, but even more in the innovative nature of its method: sketching from life is transformed from a technique into a site of thought. The unfinished brushstrokes and areas of exposed canvas that remain in the picture are traces of time and movement. Through this, Liu achieved a breakthrough in how to paint, giving realism a new form of life in the contemporary era.

Getting Chickens, Oil on linen, 2003, 200×200cm

Xuzi at Home, Oil on linen, 2010, 140×150cm

“Reality is not everything”

In the spring of 2025, Liu set out once again, traveling to the Taihang Mountains to paint from life. He had originally planned to work on landscapes, but for days he couldn’t find the right feeling. Then, one day, he decided he still needed to paint people—and thus Young Tongtian and Tianmenguan came into being. These two new works extend the social concerns of the “Remaking the Street Toughs” series, depicting members of Generation Z, while also reflecting the artist’s contemplation of time and history. The Taihang Mountains symbolize the collective memory of China’s old revolutionary base areas, while the postures and expressions of these boys represent a new generation of the present moment. Between them and Yan’an, a subtle echo seems to emerge. Liu does not observe them as a sociologist would; rather, in the very act of painting them, he is also looking back at the “boy” within himself who has never faded. He once remarked that from the moment he began learning to paint, he carried within him a certain “premature maturity”—yet, decades later, that very maturity has transformed into a sustained “sense of youth”. 20 years ago, he painted under the scorching sun of the Three Gorges; 20 years on, he still confronts the world with the posture of a “running boy”. This ongoing contest with the self forms the spiritual core of the spatial structure of The River Divides, The World Connects. Through the juxtaposition of works across different periods, the exhibition hall becomes a site of temporal circulation where time moves back and forth.

The Roar, Oil on linen, 2021, 250×300cm

©TAIKANG COLLECTIONTianmenguan (Tianmen Pass), Oil on linen, 2025, 230×188cm

As Ah Cheng once remarked, for Liu, “reality is not everything.” The meaning of painting lies in how one walks with the world—finding one’s own place between representation and transcendence. The River Divides, The World Connects thus becomes a journey that moves back and forth among reality, time, and the self: it is not merely about the two banks of a river in geographic terms, but about the near and far shores of the artist’s spiritual world.

Exhibition View

About the Exhibition

Organizer: Taikang Art Museum

Duration: 2025.11.25 - 2026.3.31

Venue: Taikang Art Museum 

Address: 1-2F, Taikang Group Building, Building 1,Yard 16, Jinghui Street, Beijing 

Opening Hours: Tues.-Sun. 10:00-17:30(the latest entry time: 16:30)

Curator: Hu Hao

Exhibition Works Supported by: He Jianping, Liu Gang & Chen Yu, Taikang Insurance Group, Major Private Collectors in Asia, CAFA Art Museum, Painting Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts

Sponsor of academic activities：Enzo.Xiao

Exclusive Recommendation Cooperation Platform: Dianping.com

Text (CN) by Liu Xinyao, (EN) edited by CAFA ART INFO.