First Friday Report

A native of Jilin, China and graduate of University of Michigan’s MFA program, Beili is now an Assistant Professor at UT Austin.

Her mixed-media installation at Three Walls Gallery, composed primarily of intricately pulled, entwined, and hung wool fibers, is entitled “Miasma” and I found standing before it t a very stirring, curious experience; provoking both thought, and an engaging conversation with Beili Liu herself, about “femininity” in contemporary art — as a positive quality, not just a first wave reaction “against” something. In Liu’s deconstructed skeins of wool there’s a perceptible “woman’s touch,” like a gesture towards traditional knitting, a rumination on the repetitive and the domestic, but also an inquiry into the sexual (hair?), and even the ghostly (smoke?).

Continuing Liu’s philosophic bent and delicate touch with materials was “Lapse”, Alongside “a 4-panel mixed-media —painting? let’s call it?— that hung alongside “Miasma”, composed of layers of delicately-burnt vellum mounted on birchwood.

Seen from afar (though not that afar-Three Walls ain’t big) it recalled stalks or grasses or something, even evoked motion, something strewn by a natural process. Which it is: which art is.

Go look at her website for her other pieces—there’s one entitled "Void"which also uses her meticulous, unexpectedly light burning ritual/technique, upon numerous layers of silk organza. Gorgeous stuff, subtly sly, and deeply thoughtful.

Michele Monseau, Three Walls gallerist (and, incidentally, one of the members of the Artist Adivsory Board of Contemporary Art Month —the other board members are Andy Benavides, Ben Judson, Michele Leslie Raymond, and Jason Jay Stevens –more about this transition in an upcoming post) encourages you all to phone up the gallery and arrange to come see the show. REALLY AND TRULY! She does NOT mind.