From November 12, 2026, to February 14, 2027, Long Museum (West Bund) will present Glimmer: Xia Yu, an Individual and an Era, the solo exhibition by artist Xia Yu, curated by Lu Mingjun. Bringing together approximately 40 paintings, the exhibition explores the artist’s sustained observations of his time through the subtle, ever-present light that permeates his work.

Text | Lu Mingjun

From a small town in Anhui to the national capital of Beijing, Xia Yu works with the ancient, slow medium of tempera, weaving in the language of ink painting. Through repeated glazing, fine dense strokes, and delicate rubbings, he leaves on the picture surface a restrained, gentle, and inwardly luminous light. This seemingly “glimmer” derives from the technical traditions of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and ancient China, and from one 1980s-born painter’s sustained observation of, and reflection on, memory, trauma, and epochal change.

This exhibition presents the trajectory of Xia Yu’s painting over more than a decade. From Ping-Pong Boy to A Family, he draws on old photographs, dreams, and fiction to salvage the shared childhood and youth of a generation. In The Tower of Triumph and Dimension of Light, he turns his gaze to urban white-collar workers, revealing an everyday life standardized and disciplined within the “matrix of light,” and the vulnerability and defiance behind it. The Twenty-four Modes of Painting series, through objects and landscapes seen “close-up,” inquires into the possibility of the “beyond,” and seeks a modicum of spiritual repose in plainness and ease.

The elder sister, small-town youths, and urban white-collar workers in Xia Yu’s paintings are neither heroes nor marginal spectacles. Swept along by the tide of the times, they nonetheless retain a glimmer of inner light. As Standing in Front of the Door suggests, past, present, and future fold into one another within the matrix of light. We hope this exhibition will lead viewers into Xia Yu’s quiet, unhurried visual world, to see how a small-town youth living and working in Beijing takes an era upon himself through painting and, in the glimmer, keeps looking toward the place afar.

About the Artist

Xia Yu was born in Anhui, China, in 1981, graduated from the Third Studio of the Oil Painting Department at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2004, and currently lives and works in Beijing. An artist of the post-80s generation, the personal life trajectory of Xia Yu and his generation inevitably finds a parallel reference in his paintings. From small town youth to the new urban middle class, from family to gender relation and then to the workplace, Xia Yu’s works, since his graduation from CAFA, have closely followed and reflected the lives of ordinary people, with the mundane helplessness and inadequacy, the typical happiness and joy. The figures have always been characterized by the artist in a very localized manner, with plump faces, delicate facial features, and unperturbed expressions, revealing a gentle and respectful nature that are difficult to distinguish between an innate disposition and a product of discipline. In the various scenes set up by Xia Yu, whether everyday or dramatic, these figures often manifest either elegant or witty physique, disclosing both of their ease and haste. These already subtle and imperceptible emotions are further softened and diluted by the artist’s signature tempera technique, converging the similar faces into a portrait of the majority that belongs to an era of China’s most rapid development.

About the Curator

Lu Mingjun is Professor at the School of Philosophy, Fudan University. His recent publications include Revolution of Art and Modern China: Radical Origins of Chinese Contemporary Art, The Power of Anonymous Art: On the Will to Form and the Potential of Images, and Expedition: Expedition: Century Avant-garde and Global Contemporary. He has been awarded the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation China Research Grant (2015), the Asian Cultural Council Grant (2017), ‌the 6^th Chinese Contemporary Art Award for Art Criticism (2017), the Award of Art China Curator of the Year (2019), the 16th Shanghai Outstanding Achievement Award in Philosophy and Social Sciences (2023), and the 9th Outstanding Achievement Award for Scientific Research in Higher Education Institutions (Humanities and Social Sciences) (2024).