LIU XIAODONG

From 8 August–10 October 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 urbanising 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.

About the Artist

Liu Xiaodong (b. 1963, Jincheng, Liaoning province, China) lives and works in Beijing. He studied oil painting at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, which he graduated from in 1988, and where he now teaches as a tenured professor.

His work has been shown in major solo exhibitions at venues around the world including Dallas Contemporary (2020); Louisiana Museum of Art, Humlebæk, Denmark (2019); Kunsthalle Düsseldorf and NRW Forum, Germany (2018); Palazzo Strozzi-Strozzina, Florence (2016); Today Art Museum, Beijing (2013); Kunsthaus Graz, Austria (2012); and UCCA Beijing (2010). He has participated in group exhibitions at institutions including Somerset House, London (2020); the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2017); Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (2016); Long Museum, Shanghai (2014); Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai (2012); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2008); and Centre Pompidou, Paris (2003). His work has also been included in the Gwangju Biennale (2014); Venice Biennale (1997, 2013); Havana Biennial (2009); Biennale of Sydney (2006); and Shanghai Biennale (2000).