A new painting series centers on a family portrait in an idyllic park, where faces dissolve into blur and outlines waver. The work presents domestic togetherness while resisting clarity, suggesting that memory cannot be fully recovered. The layering and obscuring are framed as acknowledgment that the original moment is never fully accessible. Recent paintings draw on personal narrative filtered through memory’s gauze, using looser, more gestural methods than earlier representational work. The process emphasizes fragments, traces, and partial revelation as closer to how memory actually exists. The artist’s broader practice spans multiple mediums, including photography, sculpture, and collages.
"Parents pose behind three young children in an idyllic park, the picture of domestic togetherness. Yet, the image resists clarity. The figures' faces dissolve into a blur, their outlines waver as though half-remembered or softened by time. Memory, the work suggests, is an unstable thing."
""It's built in layers, and it changes depending on where you're standing," Liu told me over email. "When I layer or obscure something, it's not about hiding it-it's about acknowledging that we never have full access to the original moment.""
""You see fragments, traces, something partially revealed," she explained. "That feels closer to how memory actually exists.""
"Liu's latest outing, aptly titled " (2016)-which was first unveiled at a 2023 Hard Feelings ," surfaces recent paintings that mine a personal narrative, filtered through the gauze of memory. But unlike the representational Family Portrait New York Studio School exhibition-Liu's subsequent works are looser, more gestural, with more layers disrupting the surface."
#memory-and-perception #portrait-painting #family-and-domesticity #layering-and-obscuring #mixed-visual-art-practice
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