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刘小东

Liu Xiaodong

Coming across a scene like this one cannot but think of Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe 2020.06.12, 2020，Watercolour on paper, 26 x 36 cm

刘小东是一位现代生活画家，他的大型作品是新兴世界的一种历史绘画。他将人的维度定位在人口流离失所、环境危机和经济动荡等全球性问题上，但通过精心编排的构图，他走在了技巧和现实之间。作为20世纪90年代涌现的中国新现实主义画家中的领军人物，他对具象绘画的坚持相当于在摄影媒体占主导地位的当代艺术背景下的概念立场。从中央美术学院毕业后，他开始致力于“真实地看待人”，并对中国社会主义现实主义的遗产保持警惕，他的作品用松散、随意的笔触绘制，层次分明。当他在生活中工作，经常在空中工作时，他会选择保姆为风景或场景提供辅助叙事。从最近的特定地点系列，如柏林的变性人/同性恋，以变性女性萨莎·玛利亚的肖像为特色，出现在刘在杜塞尔多夫的第一个综合回顾展“慢回家”中，到他的伦敦系列《半条街》（2013），以及中国新疆的和田项目（2012-13），刘还创建了一台名为《失眠的重量》（2016）的自动绘画机，它将交通流和人类运动的数字视频实时转换为一组新的绘画作品，追踪时间、记忆和行为。在达拉斯当代美术馆的驻留过程（2021）中，他融入了德克萨斯地区的社区，记录了个人、地点和当代社会。他描述了一个因多样性而充满活力和丰富的多样化世界，在这个世界里，家庭和集体价值观作为和平与博爱的原始公共手段脱颖而出。在这样做的过程中，刘重新评估了互联网和算法时代的绘画，并含蓄地援引了当前的条件，即人类和其他物体相互创造我们所知道的世界。

Liu Xiaodong is a painter of modern life, whose large-scale works serve as a kind of history painting for the emerging world. Liu locates the human dimension to such global issues as population displacement, environmental crisis and economic upheaval, but through carefully orchestrated compositions, he walks the line between artifice and reality. A leading figure among the Chinese Neo-Realist painters to emerge in the 1990s, his adherence to figurative painting amounts to a conceptual stance within a contemporary art context where photographic media dominate. His undertaking ‘to see people as they really are’ was galvanised after graduating from the Central Academy of Fine Artsand, alert to the legacy of Chinese Socialist Realism, his compositions are painted with loose, casual brushstrokes and layered with meaning. While he works from life and often en plein air, he chooses sitters to supply ancillary narratives to landscapes or situations. From recent location-specific series, such as Transgender/Gay in Berlin, featuring portraits of the transgender woman Sasha Maria which were featured in Liu's first comprehensive retrospective 'Slow Homecoming' in Düsseldorf, to his London series Half Street (2013), as well as The Hotan Project (2012-13) in the Xinjiang province of China, Liu has also created an automated painting machine entitled Weight of Insomnia (2016), which translates a digital video feed of traffic streams and human movement in real time into a new body of paintings tracing time, memory and behaviour. In Borders (2021) at the Dallas Contemprary, Liu embedded himself within Texas region communities, documenting individuals, locations and contemporary societies. He describes a varied world animated and enriched by diversity, where family and collective values stand out as primordial communal means for peace and fraternity. In so doing, Liu re-assesses painting in the age of internet and algorithm and implicitly invokes the present condition, in which humans and other objects reciprocally co-create the world as we know it.

刘小东在北京生活和工作，但曾在日本、意大利、英国、美国、古巴和奥地利承担项目，在离家更近的中国东北辽宁省晋城，他于1963年出生在那里。他拥有北京中央美术学院美术学士和美术硕士学位（19881995），现为该学院教授。他继续在西班牙马德里康普卢滕斯大学美术学院学习（1998-2009）。他的作品曾多次在达拉斯当代艺术展（2021）等地举办个展；UCCA Edge，上海（2021）；路易斯安那博物馆，丹麦（2019）；NRW论坛和杜塞尔多夫美术馆，德国杜塞尔多夫（2018）；新世纪艺术中心，中国上海（2016）；斯特罗齐宫，意大利佛罗伦萨（2016）；Giorgio Cini基金会，意大利威尼斯（2015年）；邵忠基金会美术馆，广州（2014）；民生博物馆，上海，中国（2014）；西雅图美术馆，华盛顿州，美国（2013）；今日美术馆，北京，中国（2013）；奥地利格拉茨美术馆（2012年）；新疆艺术中心，乌鲁木齐，中国（2012）；尤伦斯当代艺术中心，中国北京（2010）。他的作品还参加了许多群展，包括卡塔尔博物馆画廊、多哈（2016年）、光州双年展（2014年）、上海双年展、澳大利亚悉尼第15届双年展和意大利威尼斯双年展。

Liu Xiaodong lives and works in Beijing but has undertaken projects in Japan, Italy, the UK, the US, Cuba and Austria, and closer to home, in Jincheng, in the north-eastern province of Liaoning, China, where he was born in 1963. He has a BFA and an MFA in painting from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing (1988, 1995), where he now holds tenure as professor. He continued his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts, University of Complutense, Madrid, Spain (1998–99). His work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions at venues including the Dallas Contemporary (2021); UCCA Edge, Shanghai (2021); Louisiana Museum, Denmark (2019); NRW-Forum & Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany (2018); Chronus Art Centre, Shanghai, China (2016); Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, Italy (2016); Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice, Italy (2015); Shao Zhong Foundation Art Museum, Guangzhou, China (2014); Minsheng Museum, Shanghai, China (2014); Seattle Art Museum, WA, USA (2013); Today Art Museum, Beijing, China (2013); Kunsthaus Graz, Austria (2012); Xinjiang Arts Centre, Urumqi, China (2012); and Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China (2010). His work has also been included in numerous group exhibitions including Qatar Museums Gallery, Doha (2016), Gwangju Biennale (2014), Shanghai Biennale (2000, 2010), the 15th Biennale of Sydney, Australia (2006) and the Venice Biennale, Italy (2013, 1997).

©刘小东

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