Xuan Alyfe’s oversized paintings are colorful acrylic, spray paint, and paint marker pieces of eye candy that are entertaining enough for kids yet sophisticated enough for adults.

His solo exhibition at the new LePop Gallery in downtown Ann Arbor is a marvelous surreal balance of subtle chromatic geometry that effortlessly holds itself together even as it threatens to fall apart.

A street artist from Aviles, Spain, Alyfe does work that blends three distinct strains of 20th century modernism. As LePop associate Chaely Chartier says in her gallery statement, Alyfe’s art “evokes Miro and Kandinsky—if Kandinsky had grown up listening to punk.

“Alyfe’s work,” adds Chartier, “is playful yet strongly geometric, primitive, and at the same time unexpectedly whimsical.”

She’s certainly accurate enough on all these points—even if she seemingly overlooks the single heftiest element of Alyfe’s aesthetic.

For the first, and most immediate, influence is indeed the spirited inspiration of his countryman Joan Miro, whose dream-like surrealism is one of the more whimsical fantasies of this artform. Alyfe borrows Miro’s paradoxical biomorphism and flattened perspective to craft delightful phantasmagorias whose curious creatures enliven each painting.

The second influence—that of Kandinsky—refers to the internal vivid multi-colored balance found in these works. Using a keenly modulated palette, Alyfe borrows this internal harmony in such a manner as to give each painting a supple internal symmetry upon which the foreground composition rests. It’s a subtle strategy that complements the whimsy found in Alyfe’s art.

The third influence of Alyfe’s art is what Chartier calls his “primitivism.” Alyfe’s style of art is far too accomplished to be Art Brut. Yet the distinction still holds because there’s an organic feel to his effort that indicates Alyfe’s attacking his working surface as the mood strikes him. And this quirkiness gives the work its distinctive edgy appearance.

Finally, the fourth, unstated element of Alyfe’s art is the sheer size of his work.

Alyfe is becoming known in Spain chiefly for his oversized murals and installations. This is art on a magnitude that dwarfs the ordinary gallery. So congratulations are in order to LePop for taking on this challenge, because the gallery (housed in the former MyBuys Comerica Building space) is generous in the space it’s allotted to the artist.

Mural and installation art needs an extraordinarily generous scale to be adequate, and Alyfe’s work is certainly impressive in size. LePop, likewise, is certainly spacious enough to allow Alyfe’s larger paintings all the room they need to breathe. This scope that allows Alyfe’s art to strut what Chartier describes as his “esoteric, arcane, spiritual, and cosmological cultural offerings.”

Call them as you see them. For Alyfe’s art is oversized—it’s powerful—and it’s restless. His surreal adventures are the culmination of a finely honed imagination, expressed with a resolute chromaticity and masterly geometric poise.

“Xuan Alyfe” will continue through May 13 at the LePop Gallery, 101 N. Main St. Gallery hours are 6-9 p.m. Monday-Wednesday; and noon-9 p.m. Thursday-Saturday. For information, call 734-408-1184.