Liu Ye

Vita

Liu Yes painting is characterized by a certain silence and calmness, which stands in marked contrast to the hasty urge for progress in China’s modern days. Liu Ye has determined the appearance of Pop Art and turned it into something recognizably oriental. His painting contains an obvious sentimentality of folk art and a flatness of the paintings, which owes much to the comic book. Liu Yes’s work has been described as “the wickedness to cuteness”, although in many of his works I combine the cute and the erotic. Toddlers and cuddly rabbits, the protagonists in Liu Yes paintings, seem to cast an innocent light on the viewer. Miffy, the world-renowned children’s cartoon rabbit, has a very fluffy presence that Liu Ye reuses as a high art, turning the innocent character of a toy into a quirky and familiar fantasy. Elsewhere in his works, however, the references to Liu Yes High Art are clearer. In paintings such as Boogie Woogie, Little Girl in New York, 2005 and Once Upon a Time in Broadway 2006, he has acquired Mondraan’s compositions. In his 2006 painting International Blue (a clear reference to Yves Klein), two characters appear in what appears to be an art gallery. One, a prepubescent girl, the other, a little rabbit; the rabbit examines the painting, the little girl examines the rabbit. This innocent scene is stained with irony and uncertainty

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