Charlene Liu
Charlene Liu
Born in Taiwan and raised in the American Midwest, Charlene Liu is an artist based in Oregon. Liu creates mixed media works and multiples on paper using printmaking, drawing, and papermaking processes, alongside multimedia projects in video and installation. She combines imagery drawn from cultural references and the natural landscape to explore themes of hybridized identities, translation, and heritage. Her work has been exhibited widely and is included in private and public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, the New Museum, and the Tacoma Art Museum. Liu is an art professor and coordinator of the printmaking program at the University of Oregon, Eugene. She received a MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University in New York and a BA from Brandeis University in Waltham, MA.
I design woodblock matrices that are modular and multiple, which are output via the CNC router and laser cutter. My approach to printing is a generative process, a series of unfolding steps through which meaning and form multiply, fragment, and reconfigure through the improvisational layering of iterative, offset and ghost impressions. My imagery combines visual motifs drawn from East Asian decorative objects, familial histories, and the landscapes of my surroundings. The blocks and resulting prints become a series of abstract and reductive visual codes that compress and elide diverse cultural and personal allusions. I explore cultural transmission, translation and hybrid subjectivities through multiplicity, abstraction, and color.
