Resin Paintings: HUNG LIU

[30 July 2011, Hong Kong] —Hung Liu’s resin paintings are hybrids of the painting and printmaking processes, composed of many alternating layers of resin and oil-based pigment. The glass like surfaces with a metallic base result in complex paintings bearing a three-dimensional aspect and depth.

Hung Liu has been exploring the courage and strength of women in her paintings throughout her career, Liu continues to delve into social, political, historical aspects of China's past regimes as "subject" for her works, using old photographs as source material. As a bi-cultural citizen, she is in a position to re-present and re-examine Chinese culture, past and present, while combining images from her own life experience. Korean comfort woman during the Japanese war, concubines, war heroines, as well as, victims of the Sichuan earthquake are the subjects that show a haunting yet somehow nostalgic presence in her paintings. Layering symbolism into her works is as well a unique characteristic of her paintings.

Hung Liu was born in Changchun, China in 1948, grew up in Beijing – where she was trained at the Central Academy of Fine Art - and moved to California in 1984 where she teaches painting at Mills College. Her work is included in the collections of San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Brooklyn Museum of Art, New Jersey, The Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco – M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, Los Angeles County Museum, National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., to name just a few of her collections.

 

About Hung Liu

Hung Liu was born in Changchun, China in 1948. She grew up in Beijing. During the Cultural Revolution she worked with peasants in rice, wheat, and cornfields seven days a week. During this time she photographed local farmers with their families and also made drawings of them. In 1972 she entered the Revolutionary Entertainment Department of Beijing's Teachers College to study art and education. After graduating in 1975 she began teaching art at an elite Beijing school, Jing Shan, and also began to teach a program for children on television, "How to Draw and Paint," which lasted several years and was widely renowned. In 1979 she attended the Central Academy of Fine Arts where she majored in mural painting. In 1980 she applied to the visual arts program at the University of California, San Diego. After being accepted, it took Liu four years to obtain a passport from the Chinese government. She arrived in California in 1984.

Her work has been shown at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York; The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Contemporary Museum, Baltimore, Maryland; The Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Virginia; Denver Art Museum, Colorado; The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, California; Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Indiana; Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, New York; John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, Wisconsin; Knoxville Museum of Art, Tennessee; Santa Clara University, California; Monterey Museum of Art, California; Oakland Museum of California; Polk Museum of Art, Lakeland, Florida; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California; San Jose Museum of Art, California; Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan, Republic of China.

Hung Liu's work is included in the collections of Boise Art Museum, Idaho; Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, New York; City of San Jose, California; Crocker Art Museums of San Francisco, M.H. deYoung Memorial Museum, California; Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Indiana; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, Kansas City, Missouri; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California; California; National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.; Oakland Museum of California; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California; San Jose Museum of Art, California; Santa Barbara Museum of Art, California; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. She was awarded a commission from the Moscone Convention Center, San Francisco, California.

The artist has twice received Painting Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts; Capp Street Project Stipend, California College of Arts & Crafts, San Francisco; Eureka Fellowship in Painting, The Fleishhacher Foundation, San Francisco, California; The Joan Mitchell Foundation, Painters Sculptors Grant, New York; Russell Foundation Grant, University of California, San Diego. She has won the San Francisco Women's Center Humanities Award, California; Contemporary Art by Women of Color Artists' Award, Guadalupe Cultural Center, San Antonio, Texas and Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art (SECA) Award, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California. She has also received grants and scholarships from University of California, San Diego and Mills College, Oakland, California. In 2006 she completed a Public Art Installation at the Oakland International Airport, a three-year project entitled Going Away, Coming Home, a glass mural, which spans 160 feet. Hung Liu is the 2011 recipient of the SGC International Award for Lifetime Achievement in Printmaking (USA), among preceding winners including Chuck Close, William Wiley, Warrington Colescott, Xu Bing, and others.