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until 23.10. | #3147ARTatBerlin | Esther Schipper shows from 11th September 2021 the solo exhibition “International Architecture” by the artist Liu Ye. It is the artist’s first exhibition with the gallery.
Esther Schipper is pleased to present Liu Ye’s Internationale Architektur, the artist’s first exhibition with the gallery. On view will be twelve recent paintings, created between 2017 and 2021.
Among the motifs on which the exhibited works draw are the 1925 Bauhaus building complex by architect Walter Gropius in the German town Dessau, the Rietveld-Schroeder House designed in 1924 by the Netherlandish architect Gerrit Rietveld in Utrecht, and a 1968 equestrian estate built by the Mexican modernist architect Louis Barragán. Two works from 2021 depict figures wearing the iconic costumes the German artist Oskar Schlemmer designed for his experimental Triadic Ballet in the early 1920s, while another work, Prelude, also pictures a stage-like space, this one screened almost entirely by a red curtain from behind which a figure is looking out. Also on view are works from Liu Ye’s series of book paintings, depicting pages from the 1942 edition of Karl Blossfeldt’s Wunder in der Natur and the cover of the first publication from the so-called Bauhaus Bücher, Internationale Architektur, published in 1925.
Liu Ye, Book Painting No. 30 (Internationale Architektur Bauhaus Bücher No. 1, Albert Langen Verlag, München, 1925), 2020. Photo © the artist
Liu Ye’s work combines both direct and oblique references to the history of art to create a charged personal iconography that draws on real and imagined works of art, fictional and reallife figures. His work is informed by a sophisticated conflation of formal principles and conceptual ideas from both Asian and Western cultures. The recurring depictions of works quoting the Dutch abstract painter Piet Mondrian evoke the history of abstraction, a topic Liu Ye has explored throughout his recent work which plays on the ambiguity of representational and abstract motifs.
With its emphasis on found images and the muted color scheme reminiscent of vintage photography and prints, the exhibition seems to question the status of the image and its reproducibility. Painting here becomes a representation of stillness and contemplation, set outside of the rapidity of today’s digital image economy.
Vernissage: Friday, 10th September 2021, 2:00 – 8:00 pm.
Exhibition dates: Saturday, 11th September – Saturday, 23rd October, 2021
to the gallery
Exhibition Liu Ye – Esther Schipper | Internationale Architektur | Zeitgenössische Kunst in Berlin | Contemporary Art | Exhibitions Berlin Galleries | ART at Berlin
