An Te Liu Low FIdelity, 2022, Anat Ebgi, Installation view
About
An Te Liu’s sculptures take their origins from everyday objects designed to protect and enhance and, through his interventions, are transformed into sensual biomorphic forms that are at once familiar yet uncanny. Working in bronze, ceramic, and steel sculptures his sculptures are often composed and cast from foam packing materials, sports equipment, and other collected relics from the artist’s life. Citing the history of Modernism and its hubristic desire for purity and refinement, Liu’s transgenerational signals of the body and memory mutate and devolve. His works serve as explorations of progress, improvement, and provocations of what it might mean to achieve one’s peak physical form or “optimum condition” through time. A Pulcinella of sculpture, the works proffer multitudes of identities willfully embodying a paradox.
An Te Liu (b. 1967, Tainan, Taiwan) received his Masters in Architecture from the Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles and his BA in Art History at the University of Toronto. Working predominantly within sculpture and installation, Liu’s work has been exhibited in venues including the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Ursula Blickle Stiftung, the EVA Biennial of Ireland, the Venice Biennale of Architecture, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. His works are included in the permanent collections of The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Louis Vuitton Foundation, The Art Institute of Chicago, The National Gallery of Canada and The Art Gallery of Ontario. Liu lives and works in Toronto, Canada.
An Te Liu Tropos (for Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven) II/I/III, 2016 Tropos (for Gertrude Stein) III/III/I , 2016 Tropos (for Djuna Barnes) I/II/III, 2016
Oak and cast bronze
Through cropping and selection, Liu fashions these materials into evocative sculptures that draw from his childhood while simultaneously referencing ancient artifacts and modernist sculpture. — Jody Zellen
By inserting the fragment of an elevated highway into Robert’s landscape, An Te Liu imagines a future where key elements of urban infrastructure are preserved and memorialized. —The Bentway
Never glorifying nations or heroes in any conventional sense, Liu’s anti-monumental aesthetic is meant, among other things, to anticipate a posthuman realm, one that will be left in the wake of ego- and greed-driven ideologies. —Dan Adler
5 Exciting Local Artists We Met at Art Toronto 2018
At Art Toronto, his [Liu] cast-bronze works take a turn toward deeper abstraction, forgoing easily recognizable objects in favour of more undulating shapes that recall the work of 1960s sculptors like Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth. —David Agnew
Mimicking the language of modernist art and ancient artifacts, An Te Liu's elegant bronze works possess a refinement that belies their acute witticism and wry humor. — Jennifer S. Li
Hung from the ceiling like a model of a sunken Earth was a bronze disco ball. The facets, far from mirrors, had the sheen of dirty pennies. Missing chunks looked like dried-up seas. — Travis Diehl
Insectile, mechanical and almost totally mysterious, An Te Liu's sculptures look like alien cargo-cult relics and ritual masks from some postapocalyptic religion. Modernist body parts, sliced and curved, jaunt and squirm on clean plinths and from mounts on the smooth walls. — Andrew Berardini
Review: From packaging material to modern totem: The wry art of An Te Liu
"Transmission," as the show is titled, prompts a stimulating meditation on objecthood and time, on the aesthetic legacy the Toronto artist has inherited as well as the problematic material legacy that our consumerist culture leaves for the next generation. —Leah Ollman
Set upon plinths, platforms, and beveled recesses on one side of the gallery, the installation perfectly mimics the theater of archeological museum display. The dais is recast as a stage, and the works pulse with clownish, deadpan brilliance. — Christina Catherine Martinez
Architect and artist An Te Liu featured in Globe and Mail contemporary art series
"I often begin with something familiar and 'strange-ify' it. I like the idea that the work can instill a sense of curiosity and give an opportunity to pause and reflect, and maybe scratch your head and wonder what it is you're looking at." —An Te Liu
Who says Modernism can’t have a sense of humour? Not An Te Liu, whose playfully austere recent sculpture pokes at the ribs of idealist movement’s purity of form. —Murray Whyte
An Te has created his own lexicon through his selection of found materials, melding together the ancient and the modern. This juxtaposing of objects made of industrial materials with titles referencing figures in some cases from antiquity, illustrates the endless possibilities of reworking materials and reframing their narratives within space. —Alice Tallman
Tropos reveals how Liu’s methods not only make associative connections, but also delve into how traditions have been received and interpreted over time. His works are intentionally slippery, playing to the changes inherent in the writing and rewriting of history. —Shannon Anderson
Kensington Market Lofts Mural Presents a Gateway of Color to the Neighborhood
An Te Liu’s concept for the color configuration was based a pattern depicting the neighbourhood’s historic diversity, the distribution of the colors being drawn from an analysis of the percentage of those present in the world’s national flags. The significance of the approach is that the material sits comfortably within its bohemian context as it complements the existing vibrant-colored awnings, shops and graffiti that energize the streetscape. —ERA Architecture
Though this object appears almost alien in form, it’s cast from casing originally used to protect a Hello Kitty toy, the only trace of which can be found in three small but distinct whiskers inside of the cast like a bas-relief. Ultimately, Liu’s encounters with the spoils of consumerism reflect a regeneration of waste material into sculptural form. —Matthew Ryan Smith
The works in An Te Liu’s exhibi-tion “Mono No Ma” (monomeaningthing and mameaning space or gap) explore the act of imbuingsuperfluous objects—Styrofoampacking materials and casings—withvalue. Liu creates meaning, and thus value, by reproducing these materials in stoneware and re-encasing them within high-gloss glazes. —J. Lynn Fraser
The angled L-shape clay sculpture, supported by a spindly steel rod atop a concrete base, is based on the packaging for the latest iMac. While consumer electronics and appliances like this one are built for obsolescence, Liu’s ceramic sculptures capture that moment of unwrapping something new, even state of the art, and ask us to re-evaluate our perceptions of the oft-overlooked packaging. —Nina Boccia
Mr. Liu is much like his sculptures: willing to push boundaries and learn to wield a new craft. With grace and charm, he mentioned that he didn’t know much about ceramics at the outset but was willing to learn. Once the wheels were set in motion, he jokingly mentioned that progress was swift and with three kilns firing pieces, to him, it was akin to an episode of Breaking Bad: “We gotta cook it now!” —Tiffany Leigh
For all the clever reversals, Liu's best trick is to work that undeniable magic that only the best art can conjure, taking the old, and making it refreshingly and bracingly new. —Murray Whyte
From the Vault | An Te Liu: Gardiner Museum Toronto
While each sculpture bears the imprint of an object in use today, the ambiguity of their origin invites reflection upon our relationship to things, both utilitarian and artistic, old and new. As such, the nineteen works of MONO NO MA stand like fossils of an evolving, unconscious present. —Anne Doran
Modern Man: An Te Liu and the space between idea and object
Like the Bauhaus, the only thing Liu does not produce is architecture. But what he makes encircles architecture, inhabits the resonant field around it. With high imaginative vigor and playful spirit, Liu peoples this complex territory with multivalent images that speak to us of times rich in both possibility and pathology—childhoods in light that the artist, and the rest of us, have only tentatively outgrown, if we have outgrown them at all. —John Bentley Mays
"Duchamp certainly is an early influence on my work. Duchamp tended to defunctionialize things in the process of making them artworks. I tend to do the same thing thing sometimes, make the functional malfunctional and I go the opposite way as well." —An Te Liu
Artist creates Monopoly house as monument to credit crunch (three more and he can buy a hotel)
Standing as a monument to the credit crunch, this life-sized Monopoly house was created as an ironic statement on the global financial crisis. Liu spent two months building the house last year and employed friends and volunteers to strip the home of guttering, satellite dishes and windows before covering it in latex block filler paint. —Daily Mail
Is it a metaphor? An attempt at irony? Or is it art? According to Canadian artist An Te Liu, his life-sized Monopoly house is all three. Liu believes the mortgage mess "was caused by traders and bankers playing their games on Wall Street, so the common man was squeezed because of that." —Al Olson
Taiwanese-Canadian artist An Te Liu’s recent work operates within the complex airspace of classification, hygiene and weightlessness. Charged with conflicting and multiple readings of scales and eras, Liu employs modified devices and materials in swarms and assemblies with a tenacious attention to sequencing. —Mason White
Liu locates these altruistic ambitions not at an architectural scale but in the range of contemporary household devices that reveal a particular psychological dimension to the call for light, space, and air. The installation is not only tightly composed and formally pleasing, but provokes a range of associations and responses, able to suggest the hope and fear inherent in Modernism's continuing legacy. —Rodney Latourelle
His research, publications, and gallery-based installation work “explore issues of function, occupation, and cultural coding in the domestic and urban realms.” —The Architectural League NY
Between Air and Space: Prologue to An Te Liu’s ‘Exchange’
The pragmatic and aesthetic agendas of modern urbanism are ostensibly consistent. Yet, they may not completely overlap: There is a gap between space and air in the world they project. This is where Liu's work is uncomfortably at home. —Rodolph El-Khoury
mosaiCanada: Sign and Sound, Seoul Museum of Art (sema) (cat.)
Dead Malls, Urban Center Gallery at the Municipal Art Society, New York (cat.)
Rethinking Photography IV: New Reduction as Expansion, Galerie Fotohof, Salzburg
Blister In The Sun, Gallery Neubacher, Toronto
Bauhauswerk, weework, Toronto
2002
Newmodulr, Blackwood Gallery, Toronto and The Art Gallery of Calgary
Housebroken, Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1999
Luster, Henry Urbach Gallery, New York, NY
Bibliography - Monographs and catalogues of solo exhibitions
2018
Darryn Doull: A Sheaf of Time, exhibition essay for La Durée, Division Gallery, 2018.
2015
An Te Liu. London: Black Dog Publishing, 2015. With texts by Kitty Scott, Andrew Berardini, Pablo Larios, and Ken Lum.
2014
An Te Liu—The Knowing Nothing of the Thing. Shanghai: Art Labor, 2014. With text by Daniel Ho.
2013
An Te Liu: MONO NO MA. Toronto: George R. Gardiner Museum, 2013. With text by Michael Prokopow.
2008
An Te Liu: Matter. Berlin: Künstlerhaus Bethanien, 2008–09. With texts by Vanessa Joan Müller, Astrid Mania, and a conversation with Nicolaus Schafhausen.
Bibliography - Catalogues of group exhibitions
2016
Francesca Valente: Out of the Bush Garden—Contemporary Artists from Central-Eastern Canada. Venice: Antiga Edizioni, 2016.
2014
Josée Drouin-Brisebois, Greg Hill, Andrea Kunard, Jonathan Shaughnessy and Rhiannon Vogl: Shine a Light / Surgir de l’ombre: La Biennale Canadienne 2014. Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 2014.
2011
Michael Prokopow and Janine Marchessault, eds.: The Leona Drive Project (Public 43). Toronto: Public Access, 2011.
2010
James Gunn, ed.: One Hour Empire: Empire of Dreams. Toronto: Impulse [B:] and the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, 2010.
2009
Yilmaz Dziewior and Angelika Nollert: EVA 2009 Biennial of Visual Art. Cork: Gandon Editions,2009. Kjeld Kjeldsen and Michael Juul Holm, eds.: Fremtidens arkitektur er grøn!. Humlebæk: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2009.
2008
Julia Höner: Kreatur und Kosmos, Hier ist Amerika oder Nirgends. Berlin: Galerie Ben Kaufmann, 2008.
Aaron Betsky: Out There: Architecture Beyond Building, 11th International Architecture Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia. Venice: Marsilio, 2008.
Joseph Rosa: Reimagining the Ornamental, Figuration in Contemporary Design. Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago and Yale University Press, 2008.
2007
Julie Carson and Nana Last, eds.: Paradox Practice: Architecture in the Wake of Conceptualism. Irvine: UC Irvine, 2007.
2005
Mirko Zardini, ed.: Sense of the City: An Alternative Approach to Urbanism. Baden: CCA and Lars Müller Publishers, 2005.
JoAnne Northrup: Domestic Odyssey. San Jose: San Jose Museum of Art, 2004.
2003
Wayne Baerwaldt: mosaiCanada: Sign and Sound. Seoul: Seoul Museum of Art, 2003.
Essays and Reviews
2019
Dan Adler: Reviews—An Te Liu, Artforum, March 2019.
2018
Anna Kovler: In the Studio with An Te Liu, 2018. (Link)
2017
Ellen Mara De Yachter: An Te Liu, in Vitamin C: Clay and Ceramic in Contemporary Art. London: Phaedon Press, 2017.
Travis Diehl: An Te Liu: Transmission, Art Papers, Fall Issue 2017.
Jennifer Li: An Te Liu: Transmission, ArtAsiaPacific, Issue 105 (September-October, 2017).
Andrew Berardini: An Te Liu: Transmission, ArtReview, September, 2017.
Leah Ollman: From packaging material to modern totem: The wry art of An Te Liu, LA Times, July 11, 2017.
Christina Catherine Martinez: Critics’ Pick: An Te Liu, ArtForum, June 23, 2017.
Jody Zellen: An Te Liu, ArtScene, July/August, 2017.
Carolina Miranda: Datebook: Ideas of ‘Home’ at LACMA, Andrea Zittel in L.A. and the desert, and the diagram to end all diagrams, LA Times, June 8, 2017.
2016
Kristy Trinier: The Blur in Between, Edmonton: Art Gallery of Alberta, 2016.
Catherine Talese: Do Artists Still Find Inspiration in Literature?. Literary Hub, March 4, 2016.
Sabrina Möller: Ten Emerging Artists to Watch at VOLTA NY. Art and Signature, March 6, 2016.
Ryan Walker: Casting Shadows—An Te Liu. The Globe and Mail / Wanderer, 2016.
Alex Bozikovic: Why We Love The Art We Love. The Globe and Mail, January 30, 2016.
2015
Shannon Anderson: An Te Liu—Tradition and the Historical Sense. cmagazine125, Spring 2015, pp. 32-37.
Blaine Brownell and Marc Swackhamer: Hypernatural: Architecture’s New Relationship with Nature. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2015.
Rodolphe el-Khoury: Figures: Essays on Contemporary Architecture. Shenzhen: Oscar Riera Ojeda Publishers, 2015.
Rachel Gotlieb: Ego and Salve, in Ceramics in the Expanded Field. London: Ashgate, 2015.
2014
Carmen Cocina: An Te Liu, NE02, Issue no.137 (Noviembre-Diciembre 2014).
Jessica Iverson and Seth Fluker: An Te Liu, 01 Magazine, Issue no. 9, 2014.
Melissa Villeneuve: Everyday objects inspire art exhibits, Lethbridge Herald, September 27, 2014.
Angela Schuster: A Star in the East, Art+Auction, October 2014.
Sarah Milroy: The true north strong and fresh: National Gallery unveils Canadian contemporary art exhibition, The Globe and Mail, October 17, 2014.
Yang Lan: Canadian artists get top billing at int’l arts festival, The Global Times, October 28, 2014.
Nathan Jubb: An Te Liu and his works, Time Out Shanghai, November 19, 2014.
Brigitte Borchhardt-Birbaumer: Wunder der Kombinatorik, Wiener Zeitung, July 11, 2014.
J. Lynn Fraser: An Te Liu—Gardiner Museum, Sculpture, vol. 33 no. 3 (April 2014).
Matthew Ryan Smith: Casting the Negative, Magenta Magazine, May 2014.
2013
Murray Whyte: Unpacking the Modern, The Toronto Star, September 8, 2013.
Richard Rhodes: An Te Liu—Modernizing the Modern, Canadian Art, September 6, 2013.
Alice Tallman: An Te Liu: MONO NO MA, Artoronto, September 2013.
Nina Boccia: An Te Liu Casts the Negative Spaces of Things, Azure, October 18, 2013.
Sky Gooden: 20 Questions with Latter day Modernist An Te Liu, Blouin Art Info, October 12, 2013.
Murray Whyte: An Te Liu, King West, no. 8, 2013, pp. 28-29.
Benedict Clouette ed.: An Te Liu—On Ventilation, Volume 37: Is This Not a Pipe, Amsterdam: Archis, 2013.
2012
Murray Whyte: Oakville Gallery’s Hyper Spaces, The Toronto Star, January 4, 2012.
Jakob Rutka: BLAST, The Grid, April 9, 2012.
Cindy Wu: White Dwarf /Nuit Blanche, Ming Pao News, September 24, 2012.
Jacqueline Han: An Te Liu’s White Dwarf, Singtao Daily, December 21, 2012.
R. Klanten and S. Ehmann, eds.: Mathieu Lehanneur. Berlin: Gestalten, 2012.
2011
John Bentley Mays: Modern Man—An Te Liu and the Space between Idea and Object, Canadian Art, Summer 2011, pp. 62–67.
Anne Wagner: Screen Memories and Ordinary Objects, in Haegue Yang: Wild Against Gravity. Oxford: Modern Art Oxford / Aspen Art Museum, 2011, pp. 57–70.
Murray Whyte: A blast at our disposable culture, The Toronto Star, April 23, 2011.
R. M. Vaughan: The familiar transformed into the mysterious, The Globe and Mail, May 7, 2011.
Jennifer Fischer: Architectures, Therapeutics, Aesthetics: Technologically Enhanced Environments and the Human Sensorium, The Senses and Society, vol. 6, no. 2, 2011, pp. 250–54.
Mason White: Air Borne, DOMUS 948, June 2011.
Shannon Anderson: Hyper Spaces—Manuel Ballester / An Te Liu / Lynne Marsh, Oakville Galleries Centennial, 2011. (exh. essay).
2010
Al Olsen: A Giant Green Monument to the Credit Crunch, MSNBC Life Inc., October 29, 2010.
Artist creates Monopoly house as monument to credit crunch, Daily Mail UK, October 31, 2010.
Laura Kusisto: Do Not Pass Go: Canadian Artist Turns a Profit on Foreclosure Joke, The New York Observer, November 2, 2010.
Orna Schneid: Title Deed, NISHA Design Magazine, December 2010.
John Bentley Mays: Look Way Up, International Architecture and Design, Fall 2010.
R. M. Vaughan: The future is dystopian but buildings have modern feelings, The Globe and Mail, July 10, 2010.
Murray Whyte: A vision of the city, warts and all, The Toronto Star, June 24, 2010.
Year in Review: The Top 10 Exhibitions of 2009, Canadian Art, January 2010.
Murray Whyte: Best of the Year that was / Leona Drive Project, The Toronto Star, January 1, 2010.
2009
Richard Rhodes: An Te Liu: Board Games, Canadian Art, November 5, 2009.
Murray White: Requiem for a Suburban Lifestyle, The Toronto Star, October 25, 2009.
Lisa Rochon: Project Brings New Meaning to Art House, The Globe and Mail, October 24, 2009.
Peter Kuitenbrouwer: It’s not Park Place, but close, The National Post, October 20, 2009.
Shawn Micallef: Bungalow’s Last Stand, EYE Weekly, October 22, 2009.
David Gissen: Subnature: Architecture’s Other Environments. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2009, pp. 94–95.
Rodolphe el-Khoury: Air Apparent: An Te Liu, Man and Machine, DAMn 21, April/May 2009, pp. 34–42.
Joseph Giovanni: Shifting Center, Multiple Margins, Art In America, January 2009, pp. 49–53.
Gabrielle Moser: An Te Liu: Matter, Canadian Art, Fall 2009.
Thomas Kerting: Imaginer des objets—gardiens, Cahier d’Inspirations, Maison & Objet, Paris: SAFI, 2009.
2008
Jan Winkelmann: Frische Luft: Zur Arbeit von An Te Liu, BE Magazin 15: Auteur, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, 2008, pp. 68–73.
Mason White: 99.7 Per Cent Pure, AD Energies: New Material Boundaries, ed. Sean Lally. London: Wiley Press, 2008.
Rodney LaTourelle: Head in the Clouds, Canadian Architect, November 2008, pp. 23–27.
Stephanie Vegh: Toronto Queen West District, MAP 15, Autumn 2008, pp. 62–63.
Brooke Hodge: Seeing Things: The Venice Architecture Biennale, T magazine, New York Times, September 18, 2008.
Gary Michael Dault: Pattern Theory, Border Crossings, Winter 2008.
2007
Gary Michael Dault: Happy Birthday, The Globe and Mail, July 21, 2007.
Uta and Robert Winterhager: Wie lässt sich Kunst an kunstfernen Orten präsentieren? Modelle für morgen in Köln, Bauwelt 14, 2007.
Richard Rhodes: Toronto Now—The Moment, Canadian Art, Winter 2007, pp. 58–73.
2006
Michael Gibbs: Street: behind the cliché, Art Monthly, November 2006, pp. 29–30.
Mark Cheetham: Social Abstraction: Disease and Cure, Abstract Art Since the 60s: Against Autonomy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
2005
In neueum Kontext entsteht Schönheit, Badische Neueste Nachrichten, Karlsruhe, March 18, 2005.
Therefore Beautiful, Springerin, Band XI, Heft 2, Summer 2005.
2004
Janine Marchessault: The Shopping Mall and the Camp, Toronto: Mercer Union, 2004, pp. 3–8. (exh. essay)
Michael S. Gant: House Unbound, Metro, March 17–24, 2004.
Jack Fischer: Home is Where the Art Is, San Jose Mercury News, March 28, 2004.
2003
Charlotte Vaudrey: The Shape of the City, FRAME 35, November/December 2003, pp. 126–127.
Nikolai Janatsch: Dieses Foto ist kein Foto, SVZ, July 9, 2003. Was Sagen Fotos?, Stadtleben, July/August 2003.
Glenn Williams: NEWMODULR, Art Papers, vol. 27, no. 1, January/February 2003, pp. 54–55.
2002
Sarah Milroy: Thoroughly Modern Art, The Globe and Mail, September 25, 2002.
Heather MacKay: The Walls of Perception, Azure, September/October 2002, p. 45.
Rodolphe el-Khoury: Between Air and Space: Prologue to An Te Liu’s Exchange, Thresholds 23: Deviant, Cambridge: MIT, 2002, pp. 16–23.
Barbara Fischer: The New Modulr: 100% generic and 100% specific, Toronto: Blackwood Gallery, 2002. (exh. essay)
![This image depicts an artwork by An Te Liu titled "Mola Mola (Verschlimmbesserung I)." This artwork was created in 2022 and measures 7" x 6 ¹⁄₂" x 9" [HxWxD] (17.78 x 16.51 x 22.86 cm). Its medium is Glazed earthenware.](https://anatebgi.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/An-Te-Liu_ATL1088_1663188857.jpg)
![This image depicts an artwork by An Te Liu titled "IO (Verschlimmbesserung III)." This artwork was created in 2022 and measures 14" x 6 ¹⁄₂" x 13 ³⁄₄" [HxWxD] (35.56 x 16.51 x 34.93 cm). Its medium is Glazed earthenware.](https://anatebgi.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/An-Te-Liu_ATL1082_1663188898.jpg)
![This image depicts an artwork by An Te Liu titled "Cactoid I." This artwork was created in 2022 and measures 32 ¹⁄₄" x 9" x 4" [HxWxD] (81.92 x 22.86 x 10.16 cm). Its medium is Cast aluminum, dye stain.](https://anatebgi.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/An-Te-Liu_ATL1068_1663188922.jpg)
![This image depicts an artwork by An Te Liu titled "Ergon." This artwork was created in 2022 and measures 22 ³⁄₄" x 9 ³⁄₄" x 21" [HxWxD] (57.79 x 24.77 x 53.34 cm). Its medium is Cast bronze with patina.](https://anatebgi.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/An-Te-Liu_ATL1064_1663188926.jpg)
