Hometown boy goes down memory lane

In Your Friends, a 90-minute documentary that was completed last year, viewers are taken to artist Liu Xiaodong's paper-mill hometown, Jincheng, now a subdistrict in Jinzhou, Liaoning province.

The lens zooms in on the exchanges between Liu, a pioneering figurative painter, and those dearest to him, including his mother, brother, wife and friends, as he paints their portraits.

Ah Cheng, the writer born Zhong Acheng, has forged a friendship with Liu spanning more than three decades. He says to Liu in one scene: "You are like a child, in the state of mind of yours.... You should like this world. If you do, you would know that everything is temporary."

"You are so lucky. You haven't worked a day in your life. There is no one like you," says Liu's mother, while watching her son do a sketch of her.

In another scene, Liu murmurs as he pays respect at his father's tomb: "I dreamed of you last night. I miss you. I should have been devoted to you more, when you were alive. It is just that back then, I was still young."

The film, directed by Yang Bo, drew wide acclaim when being screened at Liu Xiaodong: Your Friends, an exhibition held last year at UCCA Edge in Shanghai. Now it has captivated the audience in Beijing, as that same exhibition has arrived at the UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in the 798 art zone, and will run until April 10.

On show are oil portraits and watercolors depicting those figures featured in the documentary, as well as diaries and manuscripts, which reflect Liu's constant concern for the realities and mentality of ordinary people in our ever-changing world.

Your Friends has been Liu's second one-man show at the UCCA. His last solo exhibition at the same venue, Liu Xiaodong: Hometown Boy, held more than 10 years ago, revolved around those living in Jincheng. In those paintings of his family and hometown people, Liu presented shrewd observations of the varying states of mind of his fellow villagers, being mingled with the recollections of the past. As always, the photographic style of Liu's compositions and the loose brush strokes, layers upon layers, revealed to his viewers a bigger picture of the dramatic social changes and the fate of people involved.

This time, Liu focuses on certain individuals with whom he enjoys an intimate bond: his mother, brother, his wife Yu Hong and daughter Honghaier, and three close friends. His works examine what these intimate relationships mean to his life, through which he addresses eternal topics such as friendship, aging and death.

You Yang, UCCA's deputy director, says Liu had the idea to paint those closest to him when spending time in New York during lockdown in 2020－his flights back home had been canceled because of the pandemic, and he, along with his wife and daughter, was confined to the neighborhood surrounding their apartment.

You says Liu began with the paintings soon after he returned home and completed them last summer. His output draws people's attention to the kinship between a mother and her children, between brothers and between husband and wife; this subtle familiarity has intensified as time goes by and becomes even more appealing.

The exhibition shows Liu's consistency with revolving his art around social realities, the growth of individuals and life's changes. Compared with the Hometown Boy exhibition, which focused on collective experiences, the paintings now on display examine the state of mind of the specific individuals closest to Liu.

"Nowadays, the life of an individual has become more important, and a person's experiences are too distinctive to be replaced," Liu says.

Making portraits is his commitment to preserving those unique experiences and paying respect to every single life.

"Portraiture is a very old genre (of fine arts). It is quite risky, and rather hard, to make portraits in the diversified world of art today," Liu says. "But I do believe portraits are durable. Making portraits is the process of looking into one's inner life, and to explore the relation between the painter and the subject."

The subjects of Liu's work in the current exhibition are primarily the middle-aged and elderly. He therefore provides a glimpse of how people of those ages view life, illness, aging and death, and how their family relations and friendships shape their visions of the world.

Liu paints from real life and, often, in the open air. His productions present a narrative quality, while at the same time being infused with poetry and rhythm. One can sense it in not only his oil works but also two new collections of watercolors on show.

Fang Yan, the exhibition's curator, says the collections, titled Half a Lifetime and Heitukeng Compositions, are of literary merit, with subtle and tender feeling to create resonance in people's hearts.