Milan, at Fondazione Prada the exhibition Storytelling, a solo show by Chinese artist Liu Ye

In Milan, Fondazione Prada presents Storytelling, a solo exhibition by Chinese painter Liu Ye (Beijing, 1964) curated by Udo Kittelmann. The exhibition first opened at Prada Rong Zhai in Shanghai in 2018 and now comes to Milan from January 30 to September 28, 2020.

Featuring a selection of 35 paintings made since 1992, the exhibition showcases Liu Ye’s intimate and sensual imagery that finds its multiple sources of inspiration in literature, art history and popular culture of the Western and Eastern worlds, resulting in atmospheres that evoke introspection, purity and suspension. In his artistic practice, fairy tale and irony coexist, traversed by a parody vein. About his production, Liu Ye stressed that “each work is a self-portrait of me.”

While in Shanghai, Liu Ye’s works interacted harmoniously with the original furnishings, decorations and colors of the historic 1918 residence, establishing a symbiotic relationship with the intimate spaces and small rooms of Prada Rong Zhai, in Milan his paintings generate a chromatic and textural contrast with the concrete walls and industrial architecture of Fondazione Prada, activating a new narrative sequence and an enigmatic contrast with the large exhibition spaces. The geographical dislocation helps focus attention on Liu Ye’s ability to create a personal pictorial universe that does not fit into any specific art movement.

In a combination of different sources and elements, different creative forces can be identified in his canvases: memory, observation, imagination and artistic training. His works are pervaded by a kind of ambiguity suspended between two worlds: reality and invention. In the course of his journey Liu Ye has developed a personal universe, at once accessible and impenetrable, which could be described as a subjective reality. His art is a means to investigate and discover himself, in a context founded on the mutual exchange between artistic production and everyday life. “Although I never became an abstract artist, what interests me is to make the narrative character essential and to tend toward simplification,” Liu Ye declares.

As Udo Kittelmann stated, “I perceive Liu Ye’s work as a sensitive pictorial message that passes between two worlds often considered contradictory: Western culture and Eastern tradition. His painting immediately aroused great interest in me because it expresses a dialectical constellation. It creates a relationship not only with the complex developments of culture in China, but also witnesses a deep knowledge of European cultural and pictorial history.”

For all information you can visit the official website of the Prada Foundation.

Pictured: Liu Ye, Daydream (1997)

Milan, at Fondazione Prada the exhibition Storytelling, a solo show by Chinese artist Liu Ye

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