“Storytelling” is a solo show by the Chinese painter Liu Ye taking place in Shanghai

Text by: Annarosa Laureti

Curated by Udo Kittelmann with the support of Fondazione Prada, the exhibition at Rong Zhai abode was presented in a preview during a cocktail event hosted by Prada on November 8, showing a selection of 30 works realized from 1992 onwards.

Western culture and Eastern tradition meets halfway in a route that involves not only the artworks displayed, but also the maison’s stunning rooms, built in the early 20th century as a truly meeting place of Chinese and European worlds, and then restored and reopened in 2017.

Strongly conveying his own past – “Every piece is a self-portrait”, the painter claimed – Liu Ye’s art unveils itself suspended between reality and fantasy. The years lived in Berlin were essential for his artistic experience but, above all, the return to his hometown Beijing, in the end of 90s. 

In his autobiographic and investigative production, in fact, different, opposite, and sometimes contradictory elements describe an isolated and unique universe, narrating the typical individual’s status immersed in a stranger culture.

“His painting has immediately raised on me a great interest because it expresses a dialectic constellation. It creates a relationship not only with the complex Chinese culture’s developments, but it makes itself witness of a deep knowledge of the European cultural and pictorial history. His images sinks in the intellectual and artistic movements both Wester and Eastern, joining past and future.” – Udo Kittelmann

“Storytelling”
From November 10, 2018 to January 20, 2019
Rong Zhai, Shanghai