Lot 429: HUNG LIU

HUNG LIU B. 1948 TIS THE FINAL CONFLICT NO.2 (DIPTYCH) signed in initials and dated 2007 oil on canvas overall: 152.4 by 243.8 cm.; 60 by 96 in.

Hung Liu - Prodigal Daughters, Hong Kong, Vibrant Life Publication, 2009, pp. 20-21

Hung Liu was born in Changchun, China in 1948, growing up under the Maoist regime. Initially trained in the Socialist Realist style, Liu studied mural painting as a graduate student at the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing, before immigrating to the US in 1984 to attend the University of California, San Diego. She currently lives in Oakland, California. As a painter, Liu challenges the documentary authority of historical Chinese photographs by subjecting them to the more reflective process of painting. Much of the meaning of Liu's painting comes from the way the washes and drips dissolve the documentary images, suggesting the passage of memory into history, while working to uncover the cultural and personal narratives fixed – but often concealed – in the photographic instant. She has written: "I want to both preserve and destrot the image." In effect, Liu turns old photographs into new paintings. Liu's works have been exhibited extensively and collected by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, and the Los Angeles County Museum, among others.