SHANGHAI, China - From August 8, 2021 to October 10, 2021, UCCA Edge presents its first solo exhibition, “Liu Xiaodong: Your Friends.” A pioneering painter of a new realism in China, Liu Xiaodong (b. 1963, Jincheng, Liaoning province, lives and works in Beijing) emerged in the 1990s, known for his acute and lucid depictions of the minute changes he observed in different slices of China’s rapidly urbanizing and developing society. Since the early 2000s, he has been known to work on-site in locations of particular poignance, from the construction site of the Three Gorges Dam to the U.S.-Mexico border during the Trump administration. This exhibition charts Liu’s artistic development in the decade since his 2010 exhibition “Hometown Boy” at UCCA Beijing, bringing together more than 120 new and existing works, including his latest series “Your Friends,” as well as sketches, diaries, and a new documentary film by long-time collaborator, the director Yang Bo. “Liu Xiaodong: Your Friends” is curated by UCCA Director Philip Tinari and UCCA Curator Yan Fang.
The title of the exhibition was inspired by Liu’s amusement at his friend, the director Zhang Yuan’s constant use of the phrase “your friends” during their portrait sessions. Divided into three sections-“The Anonymous Walker,” “Lands Revisited,” and “Your Friends”-this exhibition follows the artist’s footprints beginning with snapshots of quotidian life in small-town Northeast China, tracking his travel throughout China and abroad, and ending with the series “Your Friends,” completed upon his return to China after an extended pandemic-year stay in New York. Throughout, Liu maintains his calm and observant gaze on the lived experiences and inner life of ordinary people under the ever-evolving conditions of social reality. Beginning with looking back on his childhood friends in his Northeastern hometown and ending with looking at those nearest to him and best friends from Beijing for over three decades, Liu’s shifting subjects allow for an extended meditation on the layers of meaning in “friends,” the intimate relationships and social relations that bind us to each other, as well as a key to understanding the development of the artist’s practice in the past decade.
28 авг 2021
