FOR artist Liu Manwen, her solo exhibition “Parallel Line,” currently running at the Shanghai Oil Painting and Sculpture Institute Art Museum, is more like a review of her past creations.

The exhibition features nearly 50 of her canvases, multimedia paintings and manuscripts from 1999 to 2021. Many of them are small in size.

“I don’t like to give a kind of big conclusion to my art career,” said Liu, 60. “The size of the exhibition is quite small, but viewers get a detailed guide of how I arrived here.”

One of the pioneering female artists in China, Liu graduated from the Luxun Fine Arts Institute in 1982. Born in Harbin, northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province, in 1962, Liu has a sensitive and exquisite way of perceiving life, and her paintings are endowed with forceful expression.

Her works frequently portray the plight of women trying to find themselves. She rose to early fame depicting the dilemma of women in the 1990s. If her earlier works emphasized individual life experience, her subsequent perspective shifted to the breadth of society and depth of history.

Many are impressed by her 2010 series “Archives of Pretty Women” and “Blue Jazz” — both borrowed from existing portraits to present enlarged facial features on big canvases.

Whether the stars of the Shanghai screen in the 1930s or urban women of today, all form a strong visual impact cast in the light and shadows of a bygone era. Her application of vast, deep-blue hues on canvas strengthens the dynamic force in her works, as she believed “blue bemoans the passing of time, like flowing water.”

Also on display are her recent “Garden” and “MSC” series, which give a surprisingly different outlook.

Liu chooses light mint green and blurred depictions to reflect the gardens in Suzhou and Mediterranean landscapes.

“Many asked me what MSC stands for,” Liu said. “It is actually the name of a cruise I took to Europe in 2019, just a few months before the outbreak of COVID-19.

“When I was on the cruise with a vast blue sky and sea stretching out in front of me, I found myself ‘putting down’ many things in my life, which perfectly echoed the following pandemic situation.”

Liu said that when age goes on, she wants a more simple and purer life, and that’s also her attitude toward art.

Dates: Through December 21 (closed on Mondays), 10am-5pm

Venue: Shanghai Oil Painting and Sculpture Institute Art Museum

Address: 111 Jinzhu Road