Liu Ye: The Book Paintings

The Beijing-based artist Liu Ye is known for his precise, deftly rendered representational paintings. Drawn equally from contemporary culture and old master painting, Liu's wide-ranging visual touchstones include Piet Mondrian, Miffy the Bunny, and Prada advertisements. In this new publication devoted to his book paintings, the artist examines the book as both a physical object and cultural totem. Playing with geometry and perspective, Liu creates extraordinary and disorienting portraits of this most familiar subject. Liu's Book Painting series, begun in 2013, depicts close-up views of books that are turned open to reveal empty pages, an approach that emphasizes the object's form over its content. Rendering books' material structure--endpapers, binding, spine--in sensual detail, these paintings indicate an obsession with the book as an object and a lifelong love of literature. Liu's father was a children's book author who introduced him to Western writers at a young age, fueling his curiosity and imagination. Many of the books in Liu's father's collection were banned in Cultural Revolution-era China and the artist read them secretly throughout his childhood. This formative experience figures in his popular Banned Books series and in his book paintings in general.