Xu Dongsheng's work consistently focuses on contemporary painting as a lens and medium to reconstruct memory and experience from an individual perspective, reflecting on issues within social history and cultural structures. His paintings interweave memory with reality, time with space, individual with collective memory, and experience with perception, offering a complex reflection of human nature and a sense of alienation that challenges the viewer.

Xu's art, with its "localness" rooted in the resilience of the south, seems to hold the key to a deeper understanding of the world. By employing painting—a medium both ordinary and ancient—he conveys this perception, focusing on the reprocessing of visual materials, both present and absent, restructuring them emotionally, logically, and visually to create a heterogeneous sense of strangeness. This strangeness represents a new observation of the past, one that is personally understood and familiar.

Moreover, his work exhibits a quality of narrative "restraint," allowing language to delve into deeper mechanisms, transforming the void and mystery into tangible speech that leads to the inner self. What sets Xu Dongsheng apart is his creation of a unique artistic language, effectively bypassing the conventional boundaries of painting. While other artists are still debating between figuration and abstraction or seeking affiliations with Western or Eastern traditions, Xu has forged a new path, offering painting a new possibility.