Beili Liu
Born in Jilin, China
Lives and works as associate professor of Art at the University of Texas at Austin, Texas
The Wind Drawing: Array is one of Beili Liu's most daring and exciting contemporary ink work of late. Using an air compressor, the artist carefully and strategically pushes ink and water to glide along a coated surface. The drawings capture the sweeping movement of the air current while the ink drifts and disburses in response to the force of the air, imprinting fleeting moments of contact between the air and the surface. Her innovative technical approach, the fluidity and exuberance of the visual outcomes recall such works as Yves Klein’s Anthropométrie series.
RESUMÉ
EXHIBITION BOOKLET "Contemplative Ink"
IOGRAPHY
Beili Liu is a multidisciplinary artist whose time and process-based installations explore subjects of cultural specificity and overlaps, transient or persistent energy, and conflicting and confluent forces. Thread, paper, incense, wood, salt, water, these simple materials and compounds are the vehicles by which Beili Liu hand crafts microcosms of fragility and poignancy. By working on these everyday materials, Liu manipulates their intrinsic and bare qualities to extrapolate much more complex cultural narratives. Janet Koplos reviewed her works as being “materially simple but metaphorically rich” (Art in America Review, April 2009).
Beili Liu has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally. She has held solo exhibitions at venues such as the Hå Gamle Prestegard, Norwegian National Art and Culture Center, Galerie An Der Pinakothek Der Moderne, Munich, Germany, Elisabeth de Brabant Art Center, Shanghai, Hua Gallery, London, UK, Nordisk Kunst Plattform, Brusand, Norway, the Chinese Culture Foundation, San Francisco, and Buffalo Arts Studio. Liu has been included in group exhibitions at the Museum of Art and History, Santa Cruz, the Austin Museum of Art, Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Alexandra Museum of Art, Louisiana, Grand Rapids Museum of Art, Urban Institute of Contemporary Art, San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, Granary Gallery, Fiskars, Finland, the Kaunas Biennial—a survey of international contemporary fiber art, hosted by the National Gallery in Lithuania, and Hamburg Art Week, Germany.
Liu’s work has received critical reviews from Art in America, Sacchi Review, UK, Helsinki Sanomat News, Finland, Stavanger News, Norway, China Daily, Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, China ArtNow, Fiber Quarterly, Canada, Handelsblatt, Germany, Hamburg Abendblatt, Artillery Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, Art Slant Los Angeles, Buffalo News, Detroit Metro Times, and Austin Chronicle, among many others.
Liu has received awards and prizes including artist fellowships at Art Farm, Djerassi Foundation, Fiskars AIR Onoma Foundation, Finland, and Fundación Valparaíso, Spain. Her solo exhibition In Between was named one of the “Top Ten Exhibitions in Shanghai” in 2009 by Sacchi Review, UK. Liu received the San Francisco Major’s Award for her contribution to cultural exchange in 2008, and was named twice "Artist of the Year", by Austin Visual Art Association and the Austin Critics Table Awards. In 2011, Liu received a Distinction award at the Kaunas Biennial, Lithuania. Liu received a Walter and Gina Ducloux Fellowship in 2011 and a University of Texas Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award in 2012.
Born in Jilin, China, Liu now lives and works in Austin, Texas, USA. She is an Associate Professor of Art at the University of Texas at Austin.