Hung Liu at Rena Bransten Gallery

Drawing from Life or Death, an exhibition of new works by Hung Liu, opens Thursday April 15 at Rena Bransten Gallery in San Francisco; an opening reception will be held from 5:30-7:30 pm. The show runs April 15 - May 22, 2010.

The show includes ceramic tiles recently created by Liu at Magnolia Editions and focuses on works depicting the dead:

In a departure from her traditional referencing of historical photographs, this new body of work is comprised of paintings, drawings, and ceramic tiles that directly depict the dead - they are studies or contemplations of the ultimate still-life. Liu encountered her subjects, which had already crossed over to the "other side", on hikes near her Oakland home - two deer, a fawn - or, in the case of a Robin Red-Breast, the parking lot of her studio or on several visits to a local medical facility where she was invited to view human cadavers. These new subjects were studied, photographed from multiple angles, and rendered by hand; then juxtaposed with symbolic imagery - painted circles and ancient folkloric elements - in order to evoke the life cycle, the void, or the recycling of physical forms once spirits had departed.

Rena Bransten Gallery website