Comprised of paintings, extensive diary entries and a documentary film by iconic Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Hometown Boy offers the first complete perspective on the artistic practice of Liu Xiaodong, one of China’s most respected painters. This multi-faceted exhibition was designed and created specifically for UCCA.

Liu Xiaodong approaches his work much like a filmmaker. On paper and canvas, on video and film, he documents each step of the creative process, recording his methods, motives, observations and impressions, so that each component forms an integral part of the final work. He is the artist-as-director—the people he paints are his actors, and we, the observers, are the audience.

Liu Xiaodong was only seventeen when he left his hometown of Jincheng to study art in Beijing. Despite his travels to exotic and familiar locales and the many portraits painted over the years – one critic describes them as “the psychic composite of a nation” –Hometown Boy marks the artist’s first extended trip home in three decades. Economic development and the passage of time have changed the landscape of his hometown and altered the lives and faces of the people he grew up with. With his unerring eye for detail, Liu Xiaodong’s landscapes of Jincheng and portraits of his boyhood friends are based not on what he remembers, but on what he observes. The body of work that fills these three rooms is the result of his homecoming.

In the words of the artist himself, “Time is the greatest art of all.”

Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) is a non-profit, comprehensive art center founded in Beijing by collectors Guy and Myriam Ullens in November 2007. UCCA presents exhibitions of established and emerging artists and develops a trusted platform to share knowledge through education and research.