Arts preview: Liu Xiaodong oils pre-2007 show a different direction

For French art dealer Jean-Marc Decrop, 2007 saw not only the peaking of the frenzied Chinese art market, but also his fading relationship with Liu Xiaodong, one of today's leading contemporary mainland painters.

"I'm no longer his collector. I have no chance to buy his work any more," says Decrop, who put together the exhibition of two dozen oils and acrylics, created between 1993 to 2007, mostly from his own collection.

The Beijing-based neo-realist changed his creative direction after that period. "He was discouraged by what happened with the market from around 2005 onwards, when many collectors started to speculate and resell his works at auctions," says Decrop.

Liu gradually stopped making paintings that catered to collectors. He shifted to huge canvases, and probed political issues ranging from the Three Gorges Dam and industrialisation in Tibet, to the religious divide in Gansu province and high school violence in the US.

Decrop describes his own Liu collection as "more intimate and casual". Among the works on show are an early self-portrait of the artist lying in a bathtub, a portrait of his teenage lover, and some everyday vignettes of ordinary people in modern China.