Charlene Liu
dal 11/9/2008 al 17/10/2008
Segnalato da
11/9/2008
Charlene Liu
Virgil de Voldere, New York
Glimmer and Haze. Using an amalgamation of mediums, processes, and techniques including watercolor, ink, acrylic paint, woodcuts, and screenprint, as well as repetition, collage, and patterning the artist presents a singular vision of the natural environment that comes to reflect complex, multivalent emotional states.
Virgil de Voldere is proud to present our second solo exhibition of works
on
paper by Charlene Liu. Using an amalgamation of mediums, processes, and
techniques including watercolor, ink, acrylic paint, woodcuts, and
screenprint, as well as repetition, collage, and patterning the artist
presents a singular vision of the natural environment that comes to reflect
complex, multivalent emotional states.
Drawn to the diminutive, the overlooked, and the ephemeral, Liu presents
landscapes with points of view as seen through the undergrowth or from the
ground looking up, which differs from the panoramic vistas of her earlier
work. Developed out of the fantastical, abstracted, and almost psychedelic
images of floral and fauna created and shown earlier this year, the work in
this exhibition evocatively captures the intense beauty of nature with its
forceful oppressiveness. A silhouette of branches against the sky or a
brambly thicket of weeds can potentially induce feelings of fracture and
dissolution.
But rather than emphasizing degeneration or apocalypse, Liu accentuates the
feelings experienced during, for example, the melancholy of twilight, or the
sense of imminent danger the forest often presents. Hers is an art that
depicts the impermanent and incomplete shape of things, where beauty and
intentionality are found during moments of inception or subsiding‹before
the
bloom or after the decline.
In two works on paper, a massive spread of pinecones and a generous cluster
of cherries, continue and expand on, in an unusual way, the long tradition
of nature imagery in art, as seen in the sheer visual abundance in
seventeenth-century Dutch still lifes and the sexualized flowers of Georgia
O¹Keeffe. For Liu, though, the repetition and proliferation of a single
motif creates an amorphous visual space that shifts between illustration and
abstraction, between figure and ground, and between becoming and dissolving.
Born in Taiwan in 1975, Liu earned her MFA at Columbia University in 2003.
Solo exhibitions of her work have been held at Shaheen Modern and
Contemporary Art in Cleveland (2008), Taylor de Cordona in Los Angeles
(2007), Virgil de Voldere in New York (2006), and Andrea Rosen Gallery,
also
in New York (2003).
Opening: September 12, 2008 - 6-8 pm
Virgil de Voldere
526 West 26th Street - New York
Gallery Hours: Tuesday to Saturday 11 am - 6 pm and by appointment
Free admission