Composition with Bamboo and Grass was made in 2007-2008. With pure colors and concise lines, the picture is “purified” and “simplified” to obtain a visual “serenity”, displaying an “infinite sense of time solidification” unique to Flemish primitives paintings admired by the artist. Regarding the Bamboo series, art critic Zhu Zhu writes “the real theme of bamboo is the flow between abstraction and representation. Just as we can see Mondrian and Vermeer as two poles of understanding, we can at the same time regard them as two sides of the same coin. Liu Ye’s artistic practice reflects this ‘secret’. On the one hand, he indulges himself in continuous movement toward abstraction, first approaching and then deepening, and on the other hand promises to retain a representative form in the final work. This is tantamount to walking a dangerous tightrope between the abstract and representational worlds, or, in turn, opening the line between them into a space of possibility.” The artist Robert C. Morgan commented that Liu’s paintings “internalize large ideas within small spaces, thereby reinvigorating new possibility for intimacy in art within the transcultural excess of the present.”

Liu Ye uses modern methods to express classical images of “bamboo”. Liu says “I try to reduce the level of emotion that appear in my works, making the image seem dull and ordinary. I let the viewer’s heart calm down, and avoid touching, passionate, or sorrowful feelings. While I used to emphasize the composition of the entire picture, now I want to pull the structure out.” Composition with Bamboo and Grass is also one of Liu Ye’s important series of works on “structural” exploration.

(Edited by Lijie Wang & Miao Zijin)