Within the decorated spaces of Prada Rong Zhai, Liu Ye’s enigmatic works acquire a new layer of meaning
Curated by Udo Kittelmann, with the support of Fondazione Prada, Storytelling is a new exhibition that showcases the work of Chinese painter Liu Ye through a selection of 30 paintings created from 1992 onward. On view now until January 20, 2019, Storytelling takes place in the premises of Rong Zhai, a 1918 historical residence in Shanghai, China restored by Prada and reopened in October 2017.
According to a press release from Prada, “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 humour and a parodic vein.”
The sequence of the rooms of Rong Zhai’s two main floors punctuate the exhibition, revealing unexpected resonances between Liu Ye’s paintings, and their relation to the architectural and decorative elements. Visitors are free to move around the different spaces in order to create a palimpsest of images, memories and new stories told by the artist.
