刘琦的绘画作品给我们展现了一个在梦想中惊厥、在放浪中细腻、在秩序中被放逐的世界。不仅提供了一位艺术家成长的记录，也提供了在特定历史语境下中国人的生存文献。
1990年代，刘琦开始其艺术生涯。如那个时代的所有艺术学子一样，他曾受到艺术界各种运动的影响。这给了他广收博取、尝试多种风格和语言的机会。他那充满激情的气质使他倾向于表现主义，而他爱思考的习惯又使他不断试探观念穿透意象的限度。这两条线索，构成了其画面世界的特殊景观。
尽管刘琦的作品存在着两种风格趋向，不过，看了他全部的画，我们仍然觉得没有理由不把它们视为一个艺术整体。刘琦一直在探索将表现主义的扩张性与艺术家本能的秩序感结合的道路。他从大地、身体、甚至游丝般的气息中，领悟艺术的真实，再用这种真实来释放激情，探照人生。在他的画面中，绵密的塑造，浇铸了土地的坚实；纵放的挥写，撕裂了胸口的郁闷；轻柔的笔触，触摸着历史的创痛；厚实的色层，呈现了生命的质感•••••从他的画前走过，我们默然领悟，什么是感性与理性、浪漫与现实的平衡。
最近一个时期，对历史的沉思更多地占据了刘琦的绘画世界。在那些尺幅平常的画面中，我们邂逅了某种不平常的记忆。它尘封在心，却被突然打开。灰蒙蒙的调子，裹住了我们的观看；空旷的背景，又助我们悲酸。在看与被看之间，在现实与过去之间，在遗忘与记忆之间，好似雨雾弥漫，云层涌动，使我们看不真切，却被粗暴地吞没。艺术家用空旷的云端，孤立了权力的图像。然而，图章般的色彩却足以穿透时间，嘲弄健忘，一再锁住我们的命运。”——（吴永强：教授、博士）
Combination of Passion and Reflection in Liu Qi’s Paintings
Liu Qi’s artworks show tense and horror behind dreams, tender feeling under the expressional exaggeration, and re-ordering of the real world. Qi’s paintings are a record of not only his own growth but also the Chinese people’s life under specific historical background.
Liu Qi began his career as an artist in 1990s. As all the other art followers of that time, Qi was under influence of different trends of thought in the art community, from which he has learned and absorbed much. During that period, he also found opportunities to experiment with various styles and ways of expression. He has a tendency for expressionism due to his passionate heart while his reflective mind constantly pushes him to go beyond the limitation on expressing ideas with images. The combination of passion and reflection in Qi’s paintings makes them unique.
Though passion and reflection are two styles co-existing in Qi’s artworks, taking all his paintings into account, we can never deny the integrity of them. Qi has been consistently exploring the possibility to unite the expansiveness of expressionism and artists’intuitive sense of order. Qi tries to find true sense of arts from earth, bodies and even hairspring-like breath, and release his passion with such true sense to reflect on life. In his paintings, solid earth is densely sculpted; depressed minds are relieved by his unrestrained brush; scars of the history are caressed by his soft touch, feeling of life is expressed with thick color…… Everyone passing through his paintings may be aware of balance between sense and sensibility, romanticism and reality.
Liu Qi has focused on reflection of history recently. We may encounter a kind of extraordinary memories in his normal size paintings. Such memories are suddenly released from our closed minds. The grey colors blur our views; the vast and empty background intensifies our sadness. There appears to be pervading rain and fog and emerging clouds between gazing and being gazed at, present and past, forgetting and remembering, which blurs everything and swallows everything in it. Qi uses the open space beyond clouds to isolate images representing power. However, the red color similar to that of seals is powerful enough to penetrate through time, to ridicule forgettery, and chain up our fates again.
艺术源于生活，而自所谓文明史以来，影响生活最大的却是政治！无以逃避！
特定的政治社会，使我的生活感到一种无形的压迫感！在作品中，龙卷风、蘑菇云其肆虐、破坏的暴力性与天安门构成了某种特殊时代的内在地和谐性。天安门、浮云、枯枝、红旗、红领巾、红内裤是崇高与激情破灭后的碎片。在这里，人——仅仅是个标本！低矮的地平线,广袤、神秘而死寂！即使那一丁红色，也让我看不到一点人的气息，面对它就如面对死亡，孤独、绝望而无奈！
我不是一个历史诉说者，现实仅仅是历史多样化的镜像，过去与未来都在今天简单而机械地镜像重叠着！
——刘琦《艺术中国访谈》2007年
Art roots in life. However, from the very beginning of the history of civilization, what influences our life most is POLITICS, from which we can never escape!
Such a particular society of politics made my life being surrounded with an invisible pressure. In my work, the rage of tornado and mushroom clouds and the violence they represent, companied with Tian An Men, constructed a special era of land harmony. Tian An Men, clouds, withered tree-branches, red flags and red neckerchieves are all pieces of worship and passion after being crushed. Herein, people are only specimens! With a low horizon, the world seems so wide, mysterious, and drowsy. Even if there is something scarlet, I can't feel the existence of any human being. The world itself is dead, lonely, desperate and helpless!!
I'm not telling history, what I want to express through my painting can either be yesterday or today! It’s a unique scene in a particular society of politics.
Liu-Qi:Art China interview,2007
刘琦是一位非常关注现实社会的艺术家，但他的关注并非简单地反映、调侃或批判，而是以诗人般的气质来展现内心的情绪。因则他的作品具有明显而强烈的抒情性。
（李放：策展人、艺术家）
Liu Qi is an artist who cares real society so much that he is not simply reflecting, mocking, or judging in his paintings. Whereas, he expresses his emotion in a poetry way, that’s why his works talk in such a obvious and strong lyric style.
(Li-Fang, curator and artist)