Resonant Visions
Being Chinese, I see mark making as a natural extension of my heritage. To me, drawing is not limited to capturing a likeness of something, but rather it is how I think with a line. I am always watching that I don’t become flippant with any drawing or mark-making. I caution myself to be as authentic as I can be and to keep as much integrity as I can while I work. These paintings are becoming more and more internal as I work along. But I do believe I paint because the action of painting is truly the most engaging thing I know.*
As the world faces a new millennium, reviewing the many groundbreaking events that have transpired in the twentieth century seems both timely and inevitable. Each revolution À whether political, sociological, or technological À has engendered a reaction that crosses cultural parameters. The complexities of society are mirrored by the multivalent directions that artists have taken and by the many styles they have spawned in this century. Throughout these years, a fragile balance has been maintained between control and chaos, between intellect and intuition. Keeping these aesthetic tenets in mind, it is easy to understand that the work of Katherine Chang Liu truly reflects the times.
Examining Liu’s delicate abstractions, one captures a glimpse of various trends, specifically Cubism, Futurism, Dada and Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, and even Pop Art. While fusing the automatic gesture and the appropriated object, she has discovered her own luminous palette and fluent vocabulary. In Liu’s most recent paintings, the artist applies earthen tones of russet, wheat, charcoal, and sage in layers, producing a rich surface from which ethereal, shadowlike forms materialize.
Venturing into fresh territory with this new series, Liu punctuates her compositions with realistic imagery in the hopes that these distinctive details will amplify her visual poetry. Sometimes drawn, sometimes cut and pasted, these elements À a head, a ball, a piece of fruit, a chair, a hat, an architectural element À simultaneously emerge and dissolve onto a vaporous ground. Once inhabiting her subconscious, these images now float through Liu’s atmospheric fields of color, striking a visceral chord in the viewer that is both familiar and magical. Liu clarifies this curious mnemonic sensation, saying:
This recent body of work is based on my fascination with memories and the mysteries of children’s games. Games which are played out either alone or with a group. Games which are either from my own childhood or games in general. They can also be real or imaginary for the child.
Indeed, the artist’s “games” become resonant visions that lead the viewer into a contemplative realm in which submerged voices, images, and events from childhood spring to the memory.
Liu’s games are not necessarily ones with rules or winners. Rather, they are games that use an object as the catalyst for the imagination, as one realizes when examining specific compositions. In Liu’s Chance, the apples and the paper cut-outs bring to mind a diversion (mildly reminiscent of roulette) that young girls in the United States often play. Rotating an apple by the stem, the child slowly recites the alphabet. The artist recalls:
Spin the stem once and say “A,” then spin and say “B,” then “C,” and so forth. When the stem eventually breaks, this letter À whether “D” or “G” or “L” À is then the initial of the first name of a girl’s future boyfriend or husband. I think a lot of the girls’ games somehow deal with this fascination, mystery and wishing for the identity of this future mate.
Most children love to act out roles and dressing up in grownup clothes is an activity they do with great relish and fascination. As they role-play, children often speculate on who they will be when they become adults. This harmless exercise is the subject of Child’s Game #1 and Child’s Game #2. Liu also probes into such concepts as captivity and freedom À ideas that children sometimes engage in, albeit innocently À with two related compositions, Child’s Game #3 and Child’s Game #4. With a bottle, an outstretched hand, and a winged creature, Liu remembers her childhood in Taiwan:
I spent quite a lot of my early evening hours (5-7 p.m.) at a University Library park grounds. My sister and I would spend endless hours gathering grass hoppers, fire flies and crickets, and try to make homes in a bottle for them by adding a bit of dirt and plants. Sometimes we built rather elaborate home sites for these insects, before feeling very guilty and letting them go free.
Liu’s ultimate source is the subconscious: While these intimate dreamscapes recall visions from one’s childhood, they also illustrate the key role that the inner voice plays in the artist’s oeuvre. Rather than giving her work a narrative function, Liu believes that each piece serves as a map that delineates her emotions at a specific moment. She elucidated this concept recently, saying:
What I am trying to put down in a visual form is this vision, this reflection of all things that relate to my internal life of this time period. That’s why the paintings take on the role of a map for me. Because of the fact that my work is rather intimate, I am never quite sure what the viewer may see.
Indeed, Liu’s psyche is exposed with candor and trust in these new works. Through her subtle use of collage, her rich vocabulary, and her inherent sense of rhythm, line, and composition, a spontaneous freedom is imparted that is poetic, mystical, and cerebral in its effect. In her continuous quest to maintain a visual equilibrium between intent and intuition, Katherine Chang Liu achieves a spiritual harmony with these evocative paintings that reveals her great insight and integrity.
* All statements were provided by Ms. Liu in correspondence with the author in November and December 1995. I am extremely grateful to the artist for her gracious assistance in writing this essay. She was most generous with her time and thoughts.
Trinkett Clark
Curator of Twentieth-Century Art
The Chrysler Museum of Art
Norfolk, Virginia
@ 1995