Introduction
Prada presents Storytelling, a solo show by Chinese painter Liu Ye curated by Udo Kittelmann, with the support of Fondazione Prada. On view from 10 November 2018 to 20 January 2019, it will take place in the premises of Rong Zhai, a 1918 historical residence in Shanghai restored by Prada and reopened in October 2017. The exhibition project will show the work of Liu Ye through a selection of 30 paintings realized from 1992 onwards.
Liu Ye expresses an intimate and sensual imagination, that feeds on heterogeneous sources related to literature, history of art and popular culture from the Western and Eastern hemisphere, giving rise to atmospheres which evoke introspection, purity and suspension. In the artist’s oeuvre the stylistic features of fairy-tales coexist with the sense of humor and a parodic vein.
Referring to his own artistic production, Liu Ye underlined that “every work is my self-portrait”. Combining different elements and sources, his paintings are generated by a plurality of creative forces: memory, observation, imagination and artistic education. All his works are pervaded by a certain ambiguity as they seem suspended between two worlds: reality and invention. During his artistic development he created a personal domain, at the same time accessible and impenetrable to others, which can be described as a subjective reality.