Source:
https://scmp.com/magazines/48hrs/article/1442921/arts-preview-liu-xiaodong-oils-pre-2007-show-different-direction
Magazines/ 48 Hours

Arts preview: Liu Xiaodong oils pre-2007 show a different direction

Janice Leung

The Bathtub in Manhattan(1993).

LIU XIAODONG, 25 OIL PAINTINGS: 1993-2007
Yallay Gallery

For French art dealer Jean-Marc Decrop, 2007 saw not only the peaking of the frenzied Chinese art market, but also his fading relationship with Liu Xiaodong, one of today's leading contemporary mainland painters.

"I'm no longer his collector. I have no chance to buy his work any more," says Decrop, who put together the exhibition of two dozen oils and acrylics, created between 1993 to 2007, mostly from his own collection.

The Beijing-based neo-realist changed his creative direction after that period. "He was discouraged by what happened with the market from around 2005 onwards, when many collectors started to speculate and resell his works at auctions," says Decrop.

Watching (2000).
Watching (2000).
Liu gradually stopped making paintings that catered to collectors. He shifted to huge canvases, and probed political issues ranging from the Three Gorges Dam and industrialisation in Tibet, to the religious divide in Gansu province and high school violence in the US.

Decrop describes his own Liu collection as "more intimate and casual". Among the works on show are an early self-portrait of the artist lying in a bathtub, a portrait of his teenage lover, and some everyday vignettes of ordinary people in modern China.

Some of these apparently mundane images (such as an oil painting titled Watching) have been on view at such prominent institutions as the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, the Hayward Gallery in London, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

The humanistic qualities of Liu's figurative art left an indelible impression on Decrop when he first came across the works in the 1990s.

"In China, it's easy to get painters who have good technique. But few of them can give soul to their work like Liu does. He has the talent to inject life into his subjects," says Decrop.

Born in 1963 to working-class parents in a small town in Liaoning province, Liu graduated from Beijing's Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1988, and started portraying his friends and family. He soon expanded his scope to observe other "nobodies" at the bottom of society, such as migrant workers, villagers, prostitutes and displaced people. His fluid brushwork revealed the hardships of the poor and disadvantaged amid sweeping urbanisation and socio-economic changes.

 

Yallay Gallery, unit 3C, Yally Industrial Building, 6 Yip Fat Street, Wong Chuk Hang, Thursday-Saturday, 11am-6pm. Ends March 29. Inquiries: 3575 9417