SHANGHAI: The spiritual and psychic colors of Liu Xiuming's oil paintings are dazzling viewers at Shanghai Art Museum this week.

Liu has lived in Vienna since 1994 where she's been painting abstract. But her artistic route started with Chinese paintings.

"We all talk about combining Eastern and Western art, but when are these two really incorporated?" Liu said. "When you can't tell which part is Eastern or Western, the two are really incorporated as one."

"Liu's unique painting expression is characterized by saturated and very pure colors, which creates an imaginative space - illusionary, mysterious, and ethereal," commented Shang Hui, the curator of Liu's solo exhibition "Another Space" at the Shanghai Art Museum.

Walter Schurian, a German critic, wrote of Liu's art: "The very act of viewing results in an aesthetic transubstantiation: The surprising and ultimately mysterious transformation of color, experienced in a very real and psychic manner, morphs into a visible and clearly spiritual pleasure, i.e. into art."

Liu went to study painting and prints in Vienna, Austria in 1987. Studying under renowned professors such as Maria Lassnig and Arik Brauer, Liu received the greatest influence from a Chinese artist in Europe, Zao Wou-ki.

"I learned from him that only when you no longer think about combining Eastern and Western art, it will naturally flow out," Liu says. Following the exhibition at Shanghai Art Museum, her paintings will go on display at the office building of Hutchison Harbor Ring in Shanghai.

(China Daily 10/15/2007 page8)