Taikang Art Museum in Beijing is hosting 'The River Divides, The World Connects', a major retrospective of Chinese painter Liu Xiaodong from 25 November 2025 to 31 March 2026. The exhibition features over 70 works spanning the late 1970s to 2025, organized around two thematic threads—'East of the River / West of the River' and 'What to Paint / How to Paint'—tracing the artist's four-decade career and his evolving realist approach to everyday life.
This retrospective matters because Liu Xiaodong is a leading figure in contemporary Chinese realism, known for elevating ordinary subjects and personal experience within grand historical narratives. The exhibition offers a rare comprehensive view of his practice, highlighting how his painting reconnects individual experience with broader social and historical currents, reinforcing his influence on both Chinese and global art discourse.