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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 24, 2008

PRESS CONTACT:           
Andrea Potochniak
607 254-4563
arp37@cornell.edu

Video, sound, sculpture, and paintings of waterfalls and
streams, including several based on the Ithaca area;
artist to speak at Museum on February 14

Ithaca, NY—The Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University presents Charles Liu: Dance of Water, on view from January 12 to March 23, 2008.

Charles (Chang-Han) Liu was born in Shanghai, grew up in Taiwan, and studied art at the National Taiwan Academy of Arts and Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid, Spain. He has lived and worked outside of Taiwan for more than three decades and that international experience has informed his work on many levels. A US citizen, he currently works from his studio in Houston, where he pursues his dual career as artist and as freelance curator of exhibitions of contemporary art from Taiwan.

In his paintings, Charles Liu deftly employs traditional Chinese brush and ink techniques to create scenes of North American landscapes that blur the geographic differences between East and West and confront issues of displacement, alienation and assimilation inherent in a life that straddles different cultures. In this exhibition of new work, Liu focuses on water as a symbol of life in Eastern and Western philosophies through video, sound, sculpture, and paintings of waterfalls and streams, including several based on the Ithaca area.

First visiting Ithaca in 2005, Liu was struck by its water-eroded landscapes, and came to appreciate how the sentiment “Ithaca is Gorges” captured the power of water in the creation of local scenic beauty. In the works depicting local waterfalls—Ithaca, Buttermilk, and Taughannock, for example—there emerges an unmistakably Eastern visual effect.

Charles Liu will speak at the Johnson Museum on Thursday, February 14 at 5:15 p.m. Ellen Avril, curator of Asian art at the Johnson, will give a tour of the exhibition as part of the Museum’s “Art for Lunch” series on Thursday, February 7 at 12:00 noon. Both events are free and open to the public.

The Johnson Museum has a permanent collection of over 30,000 works of art from Africa, Asia, Europe, and North and South America. The museum building was designed by I. M. Pei. Funds for the building were donated by Cornell alumnus Herbert F. Johnson, late president and chairman of S C Johnson. The building opened in 1973.

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The Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, located on the campus of Cornell University, is open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Admission is free. The Museum is completely accessible for mobility-impaired visitors, and a wheelchair is available in the lobby. Metered parking is available in the lot next to the Museum. For more information, please call 607 255-6464. Visit the Museum’s website at www.museum.cornell.edu. The Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art is a proud member of Ithaca’s Discovery Trail: www.DiscoveryTrail.com.

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