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Painterly Proofs: Prints by Hung Liu

September 28-December 7, 2002

Exhibit Brochure (PDF)

Link to larger-format image Hung Liu, Witnesses, 1997, Color spitbite aquatint and softground etching, 20 x 27 in., Courtesy of the artist and Paulson Press. Link to larger-format image Hung Liu, Women Working: Loom, 1999, Color spitbite aquatint and softground etching, 40-3/4 x 50 in., Courtesy of the artist and Paulson Press.

This landmark exhibition will be the first to focus on Oakland-based artist Hung Liu's work in printmaking. Powerfully poised between realism and abstraction, surface attraction and underlying meaning, Liu's works reflect her own conflicted identity as she reconciles her Chinese past with her contemporary American life. Born and educated in China, Liu came to the United States in 1981 to attend graduate school at the University of California, San Diego.

Featuring more than 30 prints along with approximately four new paintings, this exhibition will showcase the unique symbiotic relationship between Liu's painting and printmaking. Liu uses the quotidian analogy of clothing to describe the interchange between her paintings and prints. In the same way that we select the appropriate clothing for different activities or events, Liu changes subject matter, technique, and scale based upon the medium in which she is working. As in her paintings, Liu obscures the imagery in her prints with a distinctive wash technique. The process allows her to "cut loose" the surface of her works. Liu identifies this as in direct response to the Social Realist style of painting in which she was trained in China--a style characterized by objects that are "painted to death."

Hung Liu was born in 1948 in Changchun, China. She earned her BFA from the Beijing Teachers College in Beijing, China, and her MFA from the University of California, San Diego. Liu's work has been exhibited nationally and has been featured in one-person exhibitions at the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum and Rena Bransten Gallery in San Francisco. In 1998, Liu's work was the subject of a nationally touring exhibition organized by the College of Wooster Art Musuem.

This exhibition is generously funded in part by a grant from ArtsCouncil Silicon Valley and is offered in conjunction with the Institute on Globalization at Santa Clara University.