LIU XIAODONG
On 6 March 2008 the Mary Boone Gallery will open at its Fifth Avenue location an exhibition of new paintings by LIU XIAODONG.
Widely considered to be the leading “New Generation” figurative painter in China, Liu studied at the prestigious Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, where he now teaches. This will be his first New York exhibition.
In 2006 Liu was invited to participate in “Vanishing Sites”, an arts project conceived to document the sweeping changes affecting the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau in Western China. Two monumental landscape paintings from this trip are presented in this exhibition. “Qinghai-Tibet Railway” is a five-panel panorama painted in situ portraying two herdsmen in Western dress leading their horses across an open plain. In the distance at one end, gray factories spew smoke under a dark sky, while at the other end, the new train cuts across the sunlit landscape. “Sky Burial” depicts a stone altar in Yushu, where ancient customs of death allow for bodies to be turned over to the elements. The scene centers on a frenzy of feeding vultures on the hillside of a broad valley. Rather than being gruesome, the painting’s fluid brushwork and intense color conveys the exuberance and cyclical nature of life.
The exhibition, at 745 Fifth Avenue, is on view through 26 April 2008. An illustrated catalogue with an essay and interview with the Artist by the show’s curator, Karen Smith, will be available. Please contact the Gallery if we can be of further assistance, or visit our website www.maryboonegallery.com.
