Beijing Dangdai Art Fair 2025 will release a series of posters centered on the works exhibited at the fair. These works not only offer possible interpretations and responses to the theme “CONCAVE & CONVEX”, but also serve as highlights previews of important works and participating galleries at the fair. The poster shared this time is from the Esquel Gallery, a representative work by Liu Xiaodong.

Liu Xiaodong is hailed as a leading figure of “neo-realist” painting among the new generation of artists in the 1990s. At a time when trends and styles were in constant flux, he chose to focus his brush and perspective on the vast society, resorting to realism and representation to capture the warmth and depth of human nature. In the past 30 years, Liu Xiaodong has been constantly traveling around the world, observing and sketching. He has carried out on-site creation in areas full of narratives and even geopolitical significance, depicting real and ordinary individuals in diverse scenes and events. He conveys his deep affection for his hometown through vigorously plain brushstrokes, and casts light on the changes of his native land amid the tide of urbanization from a subtle perspective.

The work The Finger, reworked in 2025, further refines the details of the original piece created in 2011. At that time, Liu Xiaodong returned to his hometown, Jincheng Town in Liaoning Province, and created a series of works featuring daily rural lives of his family and friends. The human figures, animals and landscape in his work, in stillness though, are brimming with underlying momentum, allowing viewers to intuitively feel the vitality of that vibrant and authentic moments. The ingeniously choreographed brushstrokes radiate Liu Xiaodong’s enduring concern for his hometown, his roots and people of his past, and also show his candid engagement with the city, the times, and life itself.