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Review: Hung Liu’s spectacular take on a humble flower

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Currently enjoying a retrospective at the Palm Springs Museum of Art, Bay Area painter Hung Liu debuts a refreshing new body of work at Walter Maciel.

Liu, who has been making dramatic paintings of turn-of-the-century Chinese prostitutes, laborers and soldiers since the 1980s, has sometimes seemed stuck within a limited vocabulary of photographic realism and extravagantly dripping paint. Her new paintings are portraits of the most humble of flowers—the dandelion—and they are spectacular.

Based on photographs taken during a road trip, the paintings are large, square, full-frontal views of the white, starry blooms. Thick brushstrokes radiate energetically from the center, suggesting a dazzling explosion.

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Other works capture the flowers as they are stripped of their seeds, leaving desiccated stalks. In their simplicity, the paintings subtly convey themes Liu has been interested in all along: the passing of time, the impermanence and fragility of life.

The exhibition also includes more familiar portraits of prostitutes and laborers, but also a selection of works based on drawings from Liu’s early years in Cultural Revolution-era China.

Reproductions of her intimate, pencil portraits, they are coated in resin and painted over in daubs and washes of color. The resin creates a slight distancing effect, poignantly standing in for the time that has passed between then and now.

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Walter Maciel Gallery, 2642 S. La Cienega Blvd., (310) 839-1840, through April 11. Closed Sunday and Monday. www.waltermacielgallery.com

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