2012, Hung Liu, The Lifter
From the museum label:
The Reader and The Lifter [pictured here] draw upon imagery from small Chinese illustrated storybooks known as lianhuanhua which translates as "linked pictures," reflecting their combination of sequential art and text. This popular book format for both children and young adults is remembered fondly by those who grew up reading them in China, as Hung Liu did in the 1950s through the 1970s. In these woodcut prints, Liu adds layers of color and texture, including acrylic drips that allude to the drips formed by linseed oil, which she layered over her paintings, a signature technique that art critic Jeff Kelley coined as "weeping realism." This intervention challenged the intentionality of printmaking with the spontaneity of Liu's experimental approach. Additionally, Liu interjected a circle made with one stroke. Circles appear often in the artist's work as references to emptiness and wholeness and the cyclical nature of everything, in the artist's words they are, "a kind of Buddhist abstraction."
2012, Hung Liu, The Lifter
From the museum label:
The Reader and The Lifter [pictured here] draw upon imagery from small Chinese illustrated storybooks known as lianhuanhua which translates as "linked pictures," reflecting their combination of sequential art and text. This popular book format for both children and young adults is remembered fondly by those who grew up reading them in China, as Hung Liu did in the 1950s through the 1970s. In these woodcut prints, Liu adds layers of color and texture, including acrylic drips that allude to the drips formed by linseed oil, which she layered over her paintings, a signature technique that art critic Jeff Kelley coined as "weeping realism." This intervention challenged the intentionality of printmaking with the spontaneity of Liu's experimental approach. Additionally, Liu interjected a circle made with one stroke. Circles appear often in the artist's work as references to emptiness and wholeness and the cyclical nature of everything, in the artist's words they are, "a kind of Buddhist abstraction."