'You're Invited'

Through Oct. 8, Hosfelt Gallery

'MY HOUSE IS Dead ... It's My Birthday," the central body of work in Crystal Liu's first gallery exhibition, is a series of 20 ink drawings of baroque, many-tiered, decaying cakes. The cakes are mountainous ruins and are either arranged into landscapes (as in Island Cake or Forest Cake), or a slice of cake stands in for the landscape itself (California Sunset Cake). Piles of flour and sugar tarted up with buttercream curlicues, these cakes are " dying" from the weight of their own celebrations, the happy moment falling apart even while it's happening. "My Butter Cream Clouds," one of the other series of drawings in the show, picks up where Thousand Layer Cake – a skyscraper of a dessert – leaves off. Liu, 25 and a recent graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute, started with cakes and spiraled creatively outward, a common occurrence within her working method. The objects in Liu's art have been described as anthropomorphic (having human characteristics), but I'd have to say they're more animistic (having souls). Each series is a narrative that contains elements of others but describes a new world. The cake, cloud, buttercream, fog, or firecracker enacts a human drama, but the logic of their roles are contained within the artworks. These "characters" are very real to Liu, and her curiosity about where they might go and what they might do makes for an intriguing and limitless project. "Let's Stick Together," the third series of drawings, best demonstrates how Liu explores the potential of these characters. Be sure to pick up the artwork checklist and read the titles to learn the story of a relationship that begins with Let's stick together like the mountain and the skies and ends with Let's stick together like fog and firecrackers. Also on display this month is Arngunnur Yr's Les Barricades Mystérieuses. Tues-Sat, 11 a.m.-5:30 p.m., 430 Clementina, SF. (415) 495-5454, www.hosfeltgallery.com. (Katie Kurtz)