In Evidence, 2012, Liu Ding addresses his own education, or cultivation, as an artist. He placed various Chinese art magazines dating from his student days together on a shelf. These are juxtaposed with articles, depictions and diapositives from the Western art world – an art world which was encountered primarily in an academic environment. Also included are Liu’s own paintings and drawings, plus artworks collected by him. Evidence grants the viewer a glimpse of the image cosmos of a Chinese art student of the 1990s who, in retrospect, admits that his most significant influences are not restricted to the classical canon of art historiography: they also include certain references »that cannot be erased from our memory and experience of art. They are equally important and relevant although they’ve somehow resided in the periphery of the main value system. I want to understand how they relate to my own thinking today«. (L.D.) Liu Ding believes that this foundation is not shaped by individual experience alone: it is also determined by norms of the time and by opportunities within the individual’s immediate surroundings. In this sense, Evidence represents a personal look back over the circumstances of recent Chinese art history.