Chinese artist Liu Ye, now in mid-career, has made a name for himself as a painter of disparate themes, ranging from his childhood experiences in China to his six-year sojourn in Europe as a student and artist. Having studied painting at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, Liu Ye moved to Europe to continue his education at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin. He is known for his literary allusions, which include the stories of Hans Christian Andersen and Lewis Carroll and the writings of Tolstoy and Nabakov. In the current show, he is offering examples of paintings done for three series: Flower, Book Painting, and Banned Book. A painter of exquisite skill, he paints figuratively, using recognizable imagery to relay meditations about both the nature of art and current society. More than many Chinese artists, Liu Ye reflects Western influence in his painting. Additionally, there is a stillness, a contemplative quality, that causes his art to stand out.
One of the standout images in the show is the artist’s Book Painting No. 20 (2017), a copy of a flower, likely a tulip, hanging upside down with dark leaves encircling it, taken from a page in the German photographer’s 1936 volume called Urformen der Kunst. A black-and-white image on the right page of the painted book (the left page is blank), the flower is rendered with startling accuracy, but it also is taken with melancholy. The sharp indentations at the end of the flower, along with the lines structuring its body, are reiterated in the dark leaves that surround is white form. As an image it is both scientific and sad: clearly, something beautiful is no longer alive, meant now for the subject of study. In Book Painting No. 26 (2019), another image painted as a copy of a Blossfeldt photograph, the plant looks greatly like a line drawing, with tendrils (no flowers) encircling a central stem and moving outward into tight spirals that stand close to its vertical. Looking at this marvelous artistic rendering of art imitating nature, we can only admire Liu Ye’s in-depth report on an image invested with a beautiful symmetry produced not humanly but by nature.