Liu Ye’s latest show at Sperone Westwater marks a big gear shift for an artist known for modestly-scaled cartoonish paintings of tight-waisted nymphets absorbed in their reading of a book, say, or, in the company of Miffy, the Dutch rabbit with a cult following in Asia, contemplating a Mondrian painting. The facture of these strange images – their pearly finesse, thoughtful lighting, and delicate, sometimes almost melancholy old masterly palette – somehow offsets their cutesy kitsch subject matter. Now Miffy and the girl have two untypical works to talk about, the larger of which, Bamboo Bamboo Broadway, is a two-story, 20-foot high nine-panel painting that manages, in one near monochrome fell swoop to pay dual homage to neo-plasticism and Chinese screen painting. Closer inspection of this essentially unphotographable behemoth bursting the seams of Norman Foster’s harshly awkward vertical gallery space reveals subtle tonal shifts and almost crystalline faceting to recall cubist or Orphist painting of the early 20th Century. And if you look even closer there are feint penciled scribbles of writing here and there, and, yes, Miffy. It is as if the little schoolgirl in one of the paintings upstairs had crept up a ladder at night to vandalize the cool perfection of this usurper. DAVID COHEN
Liu Ye, Bamboo Bamboo Broadway, 2011-2012. Acrylic on canvas, 9 panels, 236 x 354 inches (6 x 9 meters). Courtesy Sperone Westwater, New York
September 6 to October 27, 2012 at 257 Bowery, between Houston and Rivington streets, New York City, 212 999 7337
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