Hung Liu

Known for paintings drawn from Chinese historic photography, Hung Liu’s works focus on what she calls the “mythic poses” that underlay the phtographic surfaces of history. Representing such elemental human activities as laboring, eating, journeying, leaping, fighting, dreaming, and carrying one’s burden, these “mythic poses” come from particular historical circumstances, but seem epic, transhistorical, and allegorical in the her paintings. With an overlay of traditional Chinese birds, flowers, insects, dragons, and circles. Liu offers her subjects artistic evidences of their own rich heritage- as if to remind or comfort them. As a painter, Liu subjects the documentary authority of historical photographs to the more reflective process of painting; she has written: “I want to both preserve and destroy the image.” Much of the meaning of Liu’s painting comes from the way the washes and drips dissolve the photo-based images, suggesting the passage of memory into history, while working to uncover the cultural and personal narratives fixed – but often concealed – in the photographic instant.


BACKGROUND AND EDUCATION

Professor   Dept. of Painting, Mills College, Oakland, CA.

1986 MFA University of California, San Diego, CA
1981 MFA Central Academy of Fine Art, Beijing, China
1975 BFA Beijing Teachers College, Beijing, China

Comtemporary Asian Art Hung Liu

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