gdm is pleased to announce the acquisition of two major works by Liu Sheng — The Cold Within and A Drunk Village Chief — into the permanent collection of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.
Rooted in the lived realities of rural China, Liu Sheng’s practice transforms everyday experience into allegories of striking resonance. His paintings preserve and amplify stories of the countryside, offering a poignant lens through which to consider the intersections of tradition, modernity, and social transformation.
The Cold Within takes its title from a celebrated line by Tang dynasty poet Bai Juyi: “Deep in the night I know the snow is heavy, from time to time I hear the bamboo snapping.” Executed with dense brushwork and a restrained palette, the painting evokes solitude and resilience in the face of adversity. Its symbolic language gestures toward the profound social changes that reshaped rural China during the one‑child policy era, when family structures were redefined and individual lives bore the weight of demographic and cultural transformation.
A Drunk Village Chief offers a complementary allegory of power and vulnerability. Depicting a local leader losing composure at a drinking table, the painting employs exaggerated gestures that oscillate between the comic and the unsettling. The motif of intoxication becomes a metaphor for the precarious balance between authority and responsibility in rural life. Everyday refrains — from health warnings to the economic uncertainties of crop prices — are woven into the composition, grounding its allegory in the rhythms of daily survival.
Born in 1971 in Suixi, Guangdong Province, Liu Sheng graduated from the Oil Painting Department of the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. His oeuvre often centers on the realities of rural and underprivileged communities, imbued with a strong ethnographic sensibility. He continues his long‑term project Return to Sweet Potato Farming — a sustained engagement with his hometown that documents the daily lives of villagers while interrogating the social phenomena shaped by rapid urbanization.
In the autumn of 2026, gdm will present Liu Sheng’s second solo exhibition with the gallery at its Taipei space.
The Cold Within, 2023
Oil on Canvas
120 x 90 cm
