The remarkable plein air paintings of Liu Xiaodong (b.1963), which
chronicle everyday lives within our diverse modern world, are the focus
of this first monograph of his career to date.
Immersing himself in communities around the globe, Xiaodong seeks to
present people who often sit on the fringes of society who find
themselves marginalised within a contemporary world striving for
homogenisation. At first glance a traditional realist painter, closer
examination reveals an artist exploring a range of media while
interrogating the opportunities presented by modern technology. The
result is an outstanding body of work, often monumental in scale, that
examines, reconsiders, and extends observational painting in fresh
directions, while bringing into question the lines between fact and
fiction, the traditional and the contemporary, to create a wholly
original vision.