"Changing Lights", Oil on canvas 2021
"Mama Brother and Me" watercolor
"Dayuanzi" Oil on canvas 2020
"Old Mother" Oil on canvas 2020 ◎ Yu Muyun
Exhibition: Liu Xiaodong: Your friend
Duration: 2022.1.15-4.10
Venue: UCCA Ullens Center for Contemporary Art
For an artist who has achieved fame, looking back is a pious memorial. With Liu Xiaodong's solo exhibition at the UCCA Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, we were once again invited to step into his inner world: from "The Golden City Kid" to "Your Friend", the two documentaries represent Liu Xiaodong's two periods and the epitome of two eras. From 2010 to 2022, although there are only a dozen years but it seems to span the entire century, "Jincheng Boy" records Liu Xiaodong's hometown of Jincheng and those childhood playmates who have entered middle age, in "Your Friends", the protagonist becomes Liu Xiaodong's familiar friends and family.
Like all of us, Liu Xiaodong was also trapped in the difficult epidemic, trapped in New York, he could not meet with familiar relatives and friends, so he painted a group portrait of the people around him to show his appreciation. When our lives are shattered and turned upside down, memories become a solid refuge, as sociologist Xiang Biao said, "Pay attention to the people around you, pay attention to the people around you", "Your Friends" is a kind response. For such a warm documentary and work, it is better to experience it for yourself than to rely on academic language to decide.
Recording the painting process with documentaries is Liu Xiaodong's unique form of creation. In 2009, in Beijing's Zizhuyuan Renji Mountain Villa, Wu Hong once had a conversation with Liu Xiaodong, Liu Xiaodong said that he had accumulated more and more sketches, more than paintings after the text, Wu Hong asked him: "When did this change occur?" Liu Xiaodong replied: "I think this change reflects the development of my painting to society. Go to a place to draw, and gradually feel that it is not enough to simply draw, but also to talk to people. What I thought at the time, and what happened at that time, I think it was all part of the whole process, and it couldn't be separated. At this time, what is finally painted is less and less important to me, it is only a part of the whole. What I ate and thought every day during the time I was painting, what the person I was painting said to me, and my feelings about society were all recorded in the book. I feel that these records are richer than paintings, which are only the last piece of work to be completed. Liu Xiaodong is not only "painting", he also hopes that the process, the people involved in this whole thing, are recorded, and he believes that this is an equally important thing as painting.
Recording the lives of small people in the torrent of fate, discovering the emotions that have been ignored by the mainstream discourse, and turning his attention to those small-town youth who grew up confusedly in the period of the change of a generation of mainstream discourse, in the early paintings, Liu Xiaodong not only depicted his birthplace and the town where he grew up, but also fixed a nameless but condensed character of the times. As Xiang Biao said: "The reason why Liu Xiaodong can let the body itself tell the story is because these bodies are highly socialized bodies... These bodies are so realistic, first of all, because they are socially authentic. "The Lover and the Burner hit us so quickly because they embody the living conditions and mental states of naked people, experiences that resonate with everyone who has walked through that period, and even today they still have the power to shock people's hearts." This is also what Liu Xiaodong said about realism: "The subject matter I painted was not included in the painting at that time, and I also put the painting that was not included in the painting at that time, it was as simple as that." "I didn't mean to be bored, but life was like that." "Seeing two people on the edge of that stinky ditch will suddenly arouse your desire to express forgetting, and then you will draw it." 」
In 2010, the documentary "The Golden City Boy", directed by Yao Hongyi and part-timed by Hou Xiaoxian, was released, which is a deep and somewhat gray video record, while "Your Friend" ten years later is much gentler, perhaps looking at a loved one, or perhaps the epidemic has made artists rethink the foundation of the relationship and connection between people. "Your Friend" shows the common memories of a generation: relying on the sky to eat, living by people, knowing relatives and friends for decades, maintaining a lifestyle for decades, and the taboos and rules handed down from generation to generation. When we walk into the exhibition hall, we will first walk into the screening hall, and everyone who appears in the film, whether it is an internationally renowned director, Or Liu Xiaodong's painter friend, and Yu Hong, who is also an artist, will take off their social identity and show their true faces. Friends teased each other, some old things about old sesame seeds and rotten grain were recalled, the old mother was picking peanuts in the field, and the eldest brother was enthusiastic about burning kang and almost blinded his brothers... Different from the artist's life we imagine, "Your Friend" is both intimate and realistic, without glorifying or avoiding the trivialities and small layers of emotions that inevitably appear in life.
As Wang Meng said in the preface "Man and Time": "When I write about people, I have a little bit of excitement, because I love my teachers and friends, and I love the truth even more." I love the truth, so I love my teacher, respect my teacher, love my friend, even if I am hated by my friends for a while because of excessive bluntness. May I ask, if you are not afraid to tell the truth to your friends, how can you still have the opportunity to tell a few truths in your lifetime? And never telling the truth, isn't it going to die alive? This is also Liu Xiaodong's style. Liu Xiaodong said that he left his hometown since high school and grew up in a completely different range, "When I went back to painting them, I actually had pressure because art was too commercial." Artists are trapped in commerce and influenced by it to their own pace.
"Your Friend" is also a retrospective journey to discern the true heart. In the exhibition hall behind the screening hall, all the works created by the artists in the film, including drafts and sketches, are exhibited. Liu Xiaodong said that he left these sketches "in a diary style", and in the sketches that were arranged in a row, we could easily identify which was the villager who talked with Liu Xiaodong's mother in the documentary, and which was a man who stood in the corner and was not noticed by the audience but was very interested in painting, regardless of honor and inferiority, everyone had a portrait of their own, they were both part of the artist's work and the artist's life. The most moving of the works on display is the portrait of Liu Xiaodong's mother, an artist whose mother is also a farmer who has never left the land, and she and the surrounding turnip cabbage have encompassed more than eighty years of vicissitudes.
In Liu Xiaodong's paintings, the vegetables that are regarded as food by the people in the city have also regained their original dignity, which is a precious food, just as our mother raised us with them, and we also share the fate of life and death. Director Jia Zhangke once said: "Xiaodong's paintings have also changed over the years, but no matter how they change, they can find the most interesting state of people." In other words, he always grasped the most spiritual things in the times. ”
At the end of the film, the father who had left the country in "Golden City Boy" is already a piece of yellow soil, but we will also recall the afternoon in "Golden City Boy" with Liu Xiaodong: Liu Xiaodong set up an easel in the living room of his home, and after painting, he lay on the sofa, sitting on the rocking chair on the left, leaning on the mother on the right, he was lying on the sofa, the family smoked together, and there were puppies running around next to him. This is one of the happiest moments of my life.
As he himself said, if he can't go to the Academy of Fine Arts, it would be good to be a propagandist in Jincheng. He may also wander around in military coats like the young man in his painting. This is a way of survival for people in this era, the warmth and tenacity embodied in the details of life everywhere is the foundation of people, and people return to their hometown in middle age, but also for those nostalgia that are not in shape. Photo courtesy of UCCA Ullens Center for Contemporary Art