拍品描述：
款识：《H.C. ANDERSEN》 2001 YE （沿下边缘）
Christoph Noe 编，《刘野： 作品全集 1991-2015年》，柏林，2015年，图版编号01-10，第299页（图版）
Chinese artists rising at the millennium turn have made significant imprints on the history of contemporary art. The generation, living through political turbulences, ideological shifts and economic reforms, have explored unique approaches to reinvent the manifestation of contemporary art in China, both as concept and practice. Phillips Hong Kong is pleased to include in its Day sale this season properties of an Important European Collector, presenting important contemporary Chinese works by three prominent names—Liu Ye, Fang Lijun, and Wang Guangle, all of which showcase the diverse attempts Chinese artists have invested to push the boundaries of art in its representative and expressive possibilities.
“I have equal passion for fairy tales and philosophy. Fairytales are full of imagination and sensitivity whereas philosophy requires strict and rational thinking. Fairytales and philosophy represent two extreme poles of thinking. My paintings roam between these two poles, at times more towards one pole and at other times towards the opposite pole.”
— Liu YeBorn in 1964, Liu Ye embodies a new kind of individualistic expression liberated from the governance of grand narrative. Navigating between Beijing and Berlin from the 1980s to 1990s, he experienced two distinct systems of art education and was exposed to a sudden transition from rigid academism to a contemporary, postmodern flair. Since the 1990s, he has established an artistic approach anchored deeply in his childhood, characterised by a bold fairytale visuality. His oeuvre recontextualises complex cultural references that have shaped the contemporary art-historical landscape as well as his own lived experiences, thus morphing into a body of work that represents deep personal inquiry.
The current lot, H.C. Andersen stands out as an early exemplar by Liu Ye creations, exhibiting the unique mannerisms he employs to create his dreamlike fairytale world. Liu Ye abstracts the context into a backdrop of deep red. This colour, both symbolic of China at the turn of the century, and evocative of Piet Mondrian—who had a significant impact on Liu Ye—was explored throughout the artist’s early corpus produced shortly after his return to China, which further characterised his iconic ‘red curtain’ series and ‘little sailor’ series. The composition is imbued with tension and theatricality by staging the frontal view of the figure. To enhance the drama, Liu Ye skillfully appropriates vocabularies reminiscent of Baroque masters, such as Rembrandt, palpable in its strong contrast between light and shadow. Meanwhile, the formality of the portrait convention is subverted through the depiction of a rebellious and cynical face with the tongue sticking out.
“I grew up in a world that was covered up in red—the red sun, the red flag and red scarves.”
— Liu YePresenting a portrait of the iconic fairytale writer Hans Christian Andersen, the current lot occupies a special position in Liu Ye’s engagement with the device of the fairytale. It traces back to literary origins as well as Liu’s personal history: as the son of a fairytale writer, Liu had the precious chance to peek into the magical vision imagined in Andersen’s works, which served as a means of escape during his childhood. It was also thanks to Andersen and his fantastic narratives that Liu Ye explored the vocabulary of fairytale as his main artistic device, often returning to the author as a motif throughout his later years of creation. Specifically, H.C. Andersen is the first work to feature the author as a direct painterly subject, and it is also the only painting in Liu Ye’s oeuvre that bears his signature on the front in bold text as part of the composition. In this sense, Liu Ye creates an imaginative dialogue with the author who has deeply influenced his worldview, adding another self-referential layer to contemplate his own authorship within a broader cultural lineage.
Notably, Liu Ye seldom addresses the theme of China and Chineseness explicitly, and intentionally maintains a critical distance from such frames of reference. As Zhu Zhu notes, ‘For Liu Ye, human beings and art are more important than anything else. He feels repelled by big words like “politics” and “public sphere.” He feels repelled by the thought of success attained by rattling on and on about national suffering and social darkness, and similarly, he feels repelled by the view through Western-tinted glasses that defines us as “political animals.”’ i Viewers instead find in his works an alternative lens to reflect upon the situation of art within the contemporary context of China.
"There was a big black box under the bed at home, and [my] parents never let us touch it. Finally, one day when no one was at home, my strong curiosity compelled me to open the box. There were so many books inside! Andersen’s Fairy Tales, The Secret of the Treasure Gourd, Pushkin’s Fairy Tales and Poems, Anna Karenina, War and Peace, Journey to the West, Water Margin... At that time, reading such books was dangerous, but such fantastical stories, such beautiful illustrations, [led to] a new and splendid world suddenly appearing, immediately fanatically submerging a young man such as myself..."
— Liu Ye
i Zhu Zhu, ‘Only One Gram,’ Liu Ye: Catalogue Raisonné 1991-2015, Berlin, 2015, p. 33
来源:
北京，红门画廊
现藏者购自上述来源
文学:
Christoph Noe 编，《刘野： 作品全集 1991-2015年》，柏林，2015年，图版编号01-10，第299页（图版）
压克力 油彩 画布
创作年代:
2001年作