Liu Xiaodong and the New Normal...

7:36 p.m.

2020.4.16: Today there’s a beautiful sunlight and the wind is strong. I held back for a week, but it’s now time to take a walk outside, I’ll head towards Chelsea. Along the way, there are just a few people, couriers, and those walking their dogs. I pass by the aerial walkway created on the former railway and there are no people; I pass by fashion shops and there are no people, just some wooden mannequins in the shop windows. Long corridors, long streets. I walk up to 14th Street, the Apple Store is empty. Even the old cow on that steakhouse signboard looks lonely up there by himself. It’s sad, I don’t want to walk forward.
Liu Xiaodong

Liu Xiaodong was born in China (1963) but he found himself in New York when the borders were closed, so he has been stranded in the city ever since mid-February. In his small apartment he painted a series of watercolors, documenting the changes in the landscape that surrounded him. As an acute observer, the artist was able to register the particular moment we are currently living. He observed the streets and the people, much like Eduoard Manet (Paris, 1832-1883) did, when in the 19th century he painted "The Railway" to portray the many changes in his city due to industrial evolution.

Today Xiaodong surprises us with his detailed observation of a city that is not his own, but that he grasps to perfection, in Thank You 2020.4.9, a little artwork that will remain as a portrait of the time we are living: that of the pandemic.