Kristen Liu-Wong: Land Lines, Bunny Slippers, and Loads of Knives
This week’s artist is an LA based painter and illustrator who delivers a color palette that is from another planet and whose NSFW Instagram feed is something I look at at work all the time. Her paintings tell intense stories of murder, sex, and skin lesions, full of characters that are disturbing, dysfunctional, and definitely not giving any fucks.
Some of my favorite pieces nod to shunga, full of expressionless or barely amused faces deeply engrossed in whatever act they are committing. The scenery is a cross between Puzzle Planet, ancient Greece, and The Max (seriously, look it up and tell me I’m wrong).
Furthermore, she just published a zine called LADY PARTS, which is awesome since I clearly love lady parts, and which contains “fierce females and sci-fi warrior women.”
Other items I have spotted in Liu-Wong’s work include a bowl of intestines, eyeballs in a jar, mardi gras beads, in-progress pornography, varicose veins, loads of knives, an underwater volcano, biblical snakes, land lines, bunny slippers, bestiality, and fish guts.
While it is definitely her current work that caught my attention, she also has a prolific trail of past work that has evolved so far in such a short amount of time. I love love love to see an artist grow and change conceptually and stylistically, plus imagined architecture is almost always rad.
And here is a self-portrait with juice:
The following image is a variation on a theme in work by women of a certain generation, a hefty portion of those who have been and will be featured here at Lady Parts. The all important vanity/getting-ready/feeling-herself/loathing-herself/badass-bitch shot, the meaning of which I haven’t quite dissected but intend to work out if it kills me. Whatever it might mean about my generation, the artwork is always pretty amazing.
Kristen Liu-Wong, naturally, also creates monster embroidery prints, tasty looking sculptures, handmade cards, glass jars with glitter, animal pins, animations, AND very clever books.
Maybe this post should also be titled “Because why the hell not”.
