Opening Reception Friday, March 16, 5-7pm
Hung Liu is well known throughout the United States, Europe, and China, for her heart-wrenching imagery of laborers. Liu was trained as a muralist at the Central Academy of Art in Mao’s China, and many of the now thoroughly famous Chinese pop contemporary artists regard her as their “big sister” in the art world. Liu’s works until 2016 were quasi-icons for the Chinese workers and concubines whose spirits might be forgotten if not preserved in her works. These personae were so dear to her because she labored alongside them in the wheat fields for four long years during the Cultural Revolution.
Liu later immigrated to the United States, leaving her entire family and all she knew behind in China. She had to start over, with only two suitcases and $20. A testament to her dedication to her art, her paintings, tapestries, prints, and installations can now be seen in more than 40 major museums in the U.S., from the Metropolitan Museum of Art to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. With the same determination Liu harnessed to create images that are universally poignant, she mastered every artistic medium she could explore, in her constant effort to get her message of human compassion into the world. Thus, Liu embraces lithography, etching, monotype, jacquard tapestry, photography, and experimental printmaking as part of her art practice. These editioned works are equally compelling as her paintings, and as a tribute to Liu’s mastery of these media, she received the National Award for Lifetime Achievement in Printmaking.
The National Museum of Women in the Arts is hosting a solo exhibition of Hung Liu’s prints and tapestries from January through July of this year. Turner Carroll Gallery has represented Liu’s works for more than a decade, and is thrilled to present the Turner Carroll exhibition Hung Liu: Women Who Work, in conjunction with Liu’s exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. This milestone exhibition is comprised of decades of Liu’s editions, including her prints on paper, duotone photographs backed with gold leaf and mounted to panel, lithographs, and monumental jacquard tapestries. Turner Carroll is excited to share Liu’s breadth of skill with art enthusiasts, and will have materials on hand to help viewers explore the various media and symbolism Liu employs.
The National Museum of Women in the Arts writes of its exhibition: we “invite viewers to explore the relationship between the artist’s multi-layered paintings and the palpable, physical qualities of her works on paper. ‘To make her prints, Liu (b. 1948) uses an array of printing and collage techniques, developing highly textured surfaces, veils of color, and screens of drip marks that transform the figures in each composition. Describing printmaking as poetry, she emphasizes the spontaneity of the layering process, which allows each image to build organically with each successive layer’.”
Work in the exhibition may be viewed here.
For more information and high resolution images, please visit https://turnercarrollgallery.com/press-area/ or info@turnercarrollgallery.com