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Liu Xiaodong had ever taken part in "1988 Mou Su Exhibition", "1989 Chinese Modern Art Show", "Memorize the centenary of Van Gogh's Death Art Show (1990)" and so on.
In May 1995, Liu Xiaodong held his first individual art show, and his oil painting work "Yawning Man Model" finished in his school days won the first prize of students works in 1987.
Liu Xiaodong is one of representatives of the"new generation", who is a powerful character that prominent in the early 90s of the 20th century, and is a representative of groups featured with unique style in Beijing areaWith his realistic techniques of expression, Liu Xiaodong has become a representative man who on behalf of a new generation of artists.
Compared with artists who favorite with concept, behaviors and installation, Liu Xiaodong is indeed belongs to a realistic group, he loved to express things and people that existed in the real-life. With these familiar things and people, Liu Xiaodong expressed his feelings and experience on the life.
Liu Xiaodong is a very easy-going man, he likes "family trees of human" and things like this, when he depicted people who are sitting, standing, holding or alienating and taken in embarrassment, under his paint brush it showing his vague awareness of the world. Indeed, human are always pass down and take the evolution based on a clear family tree, while the life exist in a relation that not so clear.
Liu Xiaodong observed the world with such a mentality: his oil painting is a reflection of his inner world, as well as an important window to understand him, through the expressions of his own experience of life, Liu Xiaodong has formed his unique "realism" style, that is, characteristics of the so-called "new generation".
The overall features of artworks of the new generation of artists refer to use realistic or photo-realism techniques to express scenes or occasions happed in the real life, these scenes and occasions are not contained the artist's own attitude of negative or positive exactly, and what's more is an expression reveal of a sort of "stand aside" mind.
Liu Xiaodong's painting composition is optional, figure motions and expressions are naturally formed inadvertently. He oil painting works somewhere are not been managed particularly, but people did not feel uncomfortable, instead they felt "it's ok too", or "in fact it should be this way actually", and gave recognitions to Liu Xiaodong. This is also an outstanding point of the "New Genertion", artists are always try to capture new things in the real life, and this type of casual expression reflects the mind of people who living in cities, as well as meet the people's culture tastes.
In the 20th century, the old creation system of realism oil paintings have been withdraw from the stage of history gradually, and the more positions being occupied by a group of subsequent young artists prominent later, these artists are basically rooted in traditions deeply, such as Liu Xiaodong and other "new generation" artists, all has been diving into the study of the expression languages of oil painting, and choose familiar people and objects as their themes. The rise of this generation of artists is a result of the integration p of the times' aesthetic value and social cultural psychology.
