Liu Xiaohui or the existential quest for the real

Published on: 3 March 2025

By: Hervé Lancelin

Category: Art review

Reading time: 12 minutes

The artisanal dimension of Liu Xiaohui’s work is evident in his relationship with materials. He treats color not as a decorative or expressive element, but as a concrete material, endowed with weight, density, patiently constructing his compositions like an architect of silence.

Listen to me carefully, you bunch of snobs, you who wander through aseptic galleries in search of the next big sensation, the next calculated indignation, the next painting bought not to be loved but to impress your guests at an insipid dinner. Today, I want to talk to you about an artist who defies everything you think you know about contemporary Chinese painting: Liu Xiaohui. Yes, the very one who dares to paint the same silhouettes, the same female backs, tirelessly, as if he had only one idea in mind but what an idea!

Born in 1975 in Shandong Province, Liu Xiaohui grew up far from the dazzling lights of Shanghai or Beijing. He arrived in the Chinese capital at the age of 16, continued his studies at the prestigious Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), before teaching there later in the mural painting department. A trajectory that might seem conventional, but do not be mistaken there is nothing conventional about Liu Xiaohui.

What immediately strikes in his work is this monomaniacal obstinacy to paint and repaint the same motifs. His canvases are inhabited by female silhouettes seen from behind, walking towards an uncertain horizon, or by figures performing simple gestures, such as dressing in front of a mirror. But do not be mistaken it is not the subject that matters here, but the way it is treated, reworked, to the point of exhaustion.

The theater of the absurd: Liu Xiaohui and the myth of Sisyphus

Look carefully at these women’s backs, these silhouettes in white blouses and dark skirts. They inevitably remind us of the myth of Sisyphus as revisited by Albert Camus. Like the Greek hero condemned to eternally push his rock to the top of the mountain only to see it roll down and start again endlessly, Liu Xiaohui engages in a paradoxical creative process, made of repetitions and seemingly vain efforts ^[1]. He paints, erases, repaints, corrects, in an infinite quest for the perfect or rather the “right” form.

This parallel with Camusian absurdism is not fortuitous. In his essay “The Myth of Sisyphus”, Camus writes: “The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart” ^[2]. Similarly, for Liu Xiaohui, it is the very process of painting that matters, much more than the final result. When he spends weeks, sometimes months, reworking the same canvas, it is in this constant struggle that he finds his raison d’etre as an artist.

The French philosopher invites us to imagine Sisyphus happy, and that is exactly what Liu Xiaohui does he transforms this apparently sterile repetition into an existential affirmation. Each layer of paint becomes the testimony of a decision, a moment of acute consciousness. As he himself says: “I am not sure if this is the right way to paint, so I continue to try different approaches” ^[3]. This permanent uncertainty is not a weakness, but the very source of his creative strength.

The absurd dimension of his work is also manifested in his titles or rather in their absence. “Untitled Corridor”, “Untitled Green Lawn”, “Untitled Mirror”… This apparent neutrality actually hides a refusal to guide our interpretation, as if to say: what you see is only a tiny part of the process, the tip of the iceberg of a colossal, invisible but present work in every brushstroke, in every compositional decision.

What is interesting is that Liu Xiaohui uses apparently banal images as vehicles to explore deep philosophical questions. It is not by chance that he names one of his exhibitions “The Enigma of Sisyphus”. He confronts us with the apparent insignificance of our repetitive actions, while suggesting that it is precisely in this repetition that we can find meaning in our existence.

Cinema as revelation: the influence of Ozu on Liu Xiaohui

If the myth of Sisyphus offers us an essential key to understanding Liu Xiaohui’s approach, his relationship with cinema, and particularly with the work of Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu, constitutes another equally fundamental one.

It was while watching Ozu’s “Early Spring” that Liu Xiaohui was struck by the image of a woman from behind, wearing a white blouse, a dark skirt and heels. This image, captured almost by chance, became the obsession that gave birth to his series of “Back Silhouettes” ^[4]. But why this fascination for an apparently anodyne shot?

Ozu is known for his minimalist, contemplative style, his attention to the small details of daily life, his fixed shots often at the height of an observer seated on a tatami. As film critic Donald Richie writes: “Ozu shows us that life does not consist of great tragedies or great happiness, but of a series of small moments that, put end to end, constitute our existence” ^[5]. This aesthetic of the everyday, Liu Xiaohui makes it his own in his painting.

But there is more. In Ozu, the shot is never innocent, it is always charged with an invisible tension, a contained emotion. Similarly, Liu Xiaohui’s back silhouettes are not mere formal studies they are charged with an enigmatic presence, a silent pathos. The turned back becomes a metaphor for what we cannot see, what escapes our gaze, the fundamentally elusive nature of the other.

The temporality specific to Ozu’s cinema these suspended moments, these shots that linger beyond their narrative necessity finds its equivalent in Liu Xiaohui’s painting. He forces us to slow down, to contemplate, to feel the passing of time. As art critic John Berger says: “Painting, unlike photography, contains its own time” ^[6]. Liu Xiaohui amplifies this characteristic by literally superimposing temporal layers in each canvas.

What is particularly interesting is the way Liu Xiaohui translates cinematographic influence into a static medium. He does not seek to imitate the movement of cinema, but rather to capture what is most pictorial about Ozu’s cinema this ability to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary through the sole force of framing and composition.

The relationship between Liu Xiaohui and Ozu goes beyond homage or influence. It is rather a conversation between two artists separated by time, culture and medium, but united by the same aesthetic sensibility, the same attention to detail, the same belief in the expressive power of restraint.

In his recent works, where geometric colored shapes disrupt the representation, Liu Xiaohui moves away from Ozu’s pure aesthetics, but retains this attention to composition, this economy of means that characterizes the Japanese filmmaker. The blue triangles, the yellow circles become elements of visual punctuation, like Ozu’s transition shots these images apparently detached from the narrative that nonetheless create an emotional continuity.

The impossible quest for the “real”

Through his obsessive painting process, Liu Xiaohui pursues something that seems to constantly elude him: the truth, or what he calls the “reliable and real” (可靠的真实). But what is the real in painting? Is it the faithful reproduction of the visible? Is it the expression of an inner truth? Is it the very materiality of the painting?

Liu Xiaohui seems to tell us that the real is not a fixed state, but a process, an endless quest. “I have never known what the real is”, he confides, “but I can perhaps approach it through the act of painting” ^[7]. There is something profoundly moving in this modesty, in this recognition of the limits of our perception and understanding.

This quest for the real takes on a particular dimension in Liu Xiaohui when he introduces the motif of the mirror in his more recent works. The mirror, a traditional symbol of representation in painting since Velazquez, becomes for him a tool of ontological questioning. What is more real the figure or its reflection? The body or its image? The original or the copy?

By representing characters dressing or undressing in front of a mirror, Liu Xiaohui creates a vertiginous mise en abyme. He paints a representation of a representation, in a play of mirrors that evokes the questions of philosophers like Jacques Derrida on the nature of representation and the impossibility of accessing a transcendental signified ^[8].

This questioning of reality finds its formal expression in the way Liu Xiaohui treats the surface of his canvases. By dint of repainting, correcting, superimposing layers, he creates a rough, almost sculpted texture that draws attention to the very materiality of the painting. These asperities, these traces of repentance, these brush marks become the visible scars of a constant struggle with the medium, with the form, with the real itself.

As Gilles Deleuze writes in “Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation”: “Painting must tear the figure away from the figurative” ^[9]. This is exactly what Liu Xiaohui does he starts from a recognizable figure, but by dint of working it, of mistreating it, he transforms it into something else, into a presence that is no longer quite figuration but not yet abstraction something intermediate, troubling, that resists categorization.

What is particularly interesting in Liu Xiaohui’s recent work is the way he introduces abstract geometric elements circles, triangles, rectangles of vivid colors that disrupt the representation. These shapes seem to emerge from the very process of painting, as if the artist, by dint of seeking the real in figuration, ended up finding it in the pure presence of color and form.

There is something profoundly moving in this impossible quest, in this relentless determination to grasp what eludes. Liu Xiaohui reminds us that painting is not an art of certainty, but of doubt; not an art of affirmation, but of questioning. Each of his canvases is an open interrogation, a fragment of an infinite conversation with the real.

The artist as a hardworking craftsman

Liu Xiaohui embodies a figure of the artist who goes against many contemporary cliches. He is neither the tormented genius, nor the media provocateur, nor the art entrepreneur. He presents himself rather as a hardworking laborer, a stubborn craftsman who gets up early every morning to go to his studio and tackle his daily task.

“I get up at 6:20 every morning”, he confides ^[10]. This quasi-monastic regularity may seem prosaic, but it reveals a deep conception of art as discipline, as daily practice, as labor. Liu Xiaohui joins in this a long tradition of artists for whom creation is not the fruit of a sudden inspiration, but of patient and methodical work.

This ethic of work finds its expression in the very materiality of his canvases. By dint of being repainted, reworked, they acquire a thickness, a texture that testifies to the time and effort invested. As he himself says: “I prefer laborious techniques” ^[11]. What he calls with disarming modesty “stupid skills” (笨功夫), these hours spent adjusting a contour, slightly modifying a shade, reworking a silhouette, constitute the very heart of his artistic practice.

There is something profoundly ethical in this approach. At a time when contemporary art often values speed, efficiency, novelty at all costs, Liu Xiaohui chooses slowness, repetition, deepening. He can spend years on the same canvas, constantly returning to it, modifying it, literally giving it the thickness of time.

This artisanal dimension is also evident in his relationship with materials. He treats color not as a decorative or expressive element, but as a concrete material, endowed with weight, density. “I use color like a brick to build”, he explains ^[12]. This architectural metaphor is revealing Liu Xiaohui does not see himself so much as a creator of images as a builder of pictorial presences.

His studio, described by those who have visited it, resembles more that of a craftsman than that of a typical contemporary artist. Canvases at different stages of completion accumulate there, some waiting for years before being resumed. This workspace becomes the theater of an incessant activity, rhythmic by the repetitive gestures of the painter, by this daily choreography that constitutes the very essence of his practice.

This conception of artistic work as daily labor reminds us of the words of Paul Valery: “A poem is never finished, only abandoned” ^[13]. Liu Xiaohui seems to share this vision his paintings are not so much finished as interrupted, momentarily left as is, always likely to be resumed, modified, reworked.

There is in this approach a profound humility, a recognition of the limits of the artist in the face of his material, in the face of the impossible task that is his to grasp something of reality, to create a presence that resists time. Liu Xiaohui reminds us that art is not so much a question of talent or inspiration as of perseverance, obstinacy, daily commitment.

The art of stripping down

Liu Xiaohui’s painting confronts us with a form of radical stripping down, an economy of means that commands admiration. In a world saturated with images, in an art market hungry for novelty and sensation, he chooses a voluntary restriction, a concentration on the essential.

This stripping down is not synonymous with ease or poverty quite the contrary. As art critic Harold Rosenberg says: “The difficulty is not to do more, but to do less” ^[14]. Each of Liu Xiaohui’s paintings is the fruit of innumerable decisions, refusals, eliminations, to achieve a form of expression that, in its apparent simplicity, reaches a rare density.

The artist invites us to slow down, to observe attentively, to take the time necessary to perceive the subtleties of tone, the slight variations of form, the traces of repentance that constitute the true richness of his works. In a culture of distraction and immediacy, his paintings demand and reward prolonged attention.

What also strikes is the deeply human dimension of his work. Despite the apparent coldness of certain compositions, despite the absence of faces, despite the chromatic restriction, his works exude a contained emotion, a presence that touches us without our being able to say exactly why.

Perhaps it is because, as John Berger suggests, “behind every image, there is always another image” ^[15]. Behind the female silhouette from behind, behind the simple gesture of dressing in front of a mirror, other silhouettes, other gestures are hidden, a whole archaeology of painting that makes each canvas a testimony to the artist’s struggle with his medium, with the visible, with himself.

Liu Xiaohui occupies a singular place in contemporary Chinese art. Neither entirely traditionalist, nor radically experimental, he traces his own path, faithful only to his questions, to his rhythm, to his demanding conception of painting. In an artistic landscape often dominated by great historical or political narratives, he chooses an intimate, daily, obstinate exploration.

His work reminds us that painting, far from being an obsolete medium, remains a privileged space for exploring the visible and the invisible, time and matter, presence and absence. Through his repeated silhouettes, his purified spaces, his infinitely repeated simple gestures, Liu Xiaohui offers us a profound meditation on what it means to see, to represent, to be in the world. He proposes another way that of deepening, patience, attention to small things, acceptance of limits. A lesson in humility and perseverance that we need more than ever.