NEW YORK, NY.- Dinner Gallery presents In Convalescence, a solo exhibition featuring 5 sculptures by Wen Liu. The exhibition will be on view from September 14th through October 28th.
Employing mold making processes to mimic the molting process of animals, Liu’s practice is an exploration of loss and abandonment. Her sculptures are an assembly of new and found materials that echo the shape of their predecessors and serve as analogies for lived time and memory.
As an immigrant in the United States, Liu has often questioned her belonging and security. While navigating her new home, she began collecting found furniture from estate sales as subjects for her molds. Combining these discarded objects and giving them new life, her organic and bodily forms fluctuate between time and space, commenting on concepts of value, displacement and abandonment.
Liu’s own personal relationships have also played a large role in her practice. Confronted by the passing of her father, The Furthest Holding is a reflection of their estrangement. On her last visit home, Liu created a mold of her father’s hand by pressing clay into his palm and transposing it onto a clay pinecone. Connected by a latex mold of a decaying tree, lays a second pinecone with her own palm print, referencing their physical and emotional distance.
Like an alchemist, Liu mixes herbs into her materials channeling the healing properties of Eastern medicine prevalent from her upbringing in China. In Silhouette of a Dose, she encases Chinese herbs in resin like a stained glass window, preserving them for eternity. In other works, Liu mixes herbs and clay, allowing the herbs to be burned away in the kiln, leaving behind traces and impressions of what once existed.
Liu considers her practice a transformative journey and is an apt metaphor for the emotional complexity of moving through loss, grief and healing. Similar to the shedding of an exoskeleton of a reptile, her works convey narratives of absence and presence and serve as a reminder that the old gives way to the new.
Wen Liu (b. 1985 in Shanghai, China) earned her BFA in sculpture and MFA in fiber at the China Academy of Art. She was a DCASE Individual Artists Program Grantee for 2018, 2019 and 2020, and she received the Illinois Arts Council Agency 2020 Artist Fellowship Award. She has attended residencies at The RAiR Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, MASS MoCA, ACRE and Center Program at Hyde Park Art Center. Her work has been exhibited in the National Grand Theater in Beijing, China; 6018/North, Zhou B Art Center, Manifold Gallery and Culture Center in Chicago, Lubeznik Center for the Arts in Michigan City, IN, the Chicago Cultural Center and most recently at The Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art in New Mexico. Liu currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
