PS 122 Gallery

PS122 Gallery's Annual benefit show starts on Saturday December 5th (5-7pm) and will remain on view until December 21st. All the artworks in the show can be purchased for $122--the proceeds going to the non-profit PS122 Gallery. I went last year and had a lot of fun--but sure to show up early, otherwise you'll find many of the works are already spoken for. After the opening on the 5th, the gallery hours are Thursday - Sunday, 12-6pm.

The gallery is located at:

150 First Avenue
(Entrance on 9th Street between First Ave. and Ave. A.)
New York, NY 10009


The Participating Artists:

Katie Archer, Jae-Hi Ahn, Liz Ainslie, Christopher Albert, Fanny Allie, Blanka Amezkua, Markos Andennerbrine, Mary Begley, Nathan Bennet, Gail Biederman, Hanna Bluhm, Vincent Bolognini, Chakaia Booker, Chris Bors, Aileen Boyce, Susan Breitsch, Robert Brush, Pam Butler, Linda Byrne, Karlos Carcamo, Diane Carr, Christine Catsifas, Colin Chase, Eun Young Choi, Vincent Ciniglio, Nancy Cohen, Heather Courtney, Catherine Cox, John Craig, Adam Cruces, Page Davidson, Willie Davis, Tom DeLaney, Eduardo DiFarnecio, Kate Dodd, Brian Michael Dunn, Robert Dupree, Linn Edwards, Rady Elbasna, Chris Fennell, Amy Finkbeiner, Allen Frame, Christopher Frederick, Linda Ganjian, Adres Garcia-Pena, Bonnie Geller,Geld, Alice Gibson, Abby Goodman, John Goras, Linda Gottesfeld, Sara Greene, Linda Griggs, Lenio Grohmann, Dominick Guida, Ethan Ham, Yoni Hamburger, Johnathan Hamburger, James Harmon, Patty Harris, Erica Hauser, Susan Havens, Kylie Heidenheimer, Linda Herritt, Corin Hewitt, Carolyn Hopkins, Jane Hsu, Scott Wayne Indiana, Ketta Ioannidou, Hong Seon Jang, Wyatt Kahn, Judy Kashman, Tomoko Kawanaka, Gideon Kendall, Seung Ae Kim, Katy Krantz, Mark Krunsey, Leila, Elisa Lendvay, Christopher Lesnewski, Colleen Longo, Jason Losh, Barbara Lubliner, Tony Luib, Rita MacDonald, Hilary Maslon, Summer McCorckle, Grady McFerrin, Tricia McLaughlin, Meryl Meisler, Christina E. Miles, Carlos Motta (The Center for Book Arts), Miroyoki Nakamia, Laura Napier, Christopher Silas Neal, Margie Neuhaus, Sarah Nichols (The Center of Book Arts), Paul Nowell, Patrict O'Hara, Leah Oates, Lee Young Ok, Ann Oren, Min Ha Park, Young Park, Will Pappenheimer, Julie Peppito, Tony Phillips, Nicole Poko, Heidi Pollard, Praxis, Judith Rapheal, Laurie Robinson, Jorge Rojas, Zevan Rosser, Rocco Scary, Ellen Schiff, Norman Shapiro, Paul Shima, Erin Siegal, Brad Silk, Judy Simonian, Gregory Slick, Johanna Bystron Sms, Aimee Stern, Melissa Stern, Amy Stienbarger, Ryan Sullivan, Anner Svaner, Amy Talluto, Joanna Tam, Jeremiah Teipen, Robin Tewes, Tom Thayer, Sarah Trigg, Joe Tully, Sarah Vogwell, Joy Whalen, Eleanor White, Jenny Wilson, Nina Yankowitz, Brahna Yassky, Chih-Hua Yeh, Liz Zanis, Aaron Zimmerman, Bryan Zimmerman and others.

From Ethan Ham's Blog Click Here

Installing The Box show.

Thanks Nancy! :-)

The Simpsons intro

The Simpsons intro: The Universe lies within Homer
Click here

It reminds me of the movie, The Tast of tea.
When young Sachiko (Maya Banno) got rid of her giant Doppelgänger, she flew out the universe within a seed of sunflower.
( Sachiko is followed by a giant version of herself, which she thinks she can get rid of if only she can do a back flip on the horizontal bar.)
Click here

The Box

I am participating this group exhibition, The Box.
This is my idea sketch for the show.

The Obscure Boxes, 2008, Mixed media, 10"x12"x12"

런던산책

Please support my friend, Young Ja Park.
She published her first book about London with one of the biggist publishing company HAN GIL SA in korea.
It will be a good Christmas gift.!!!
드디어 영자언니 책이 나왔다.
오호!!!
크리스마스 선물을 미리 받은 기분이다.

Memory's Garden

Thesis Show "Memory's Garden"
지난 2년간 공부한 결과라고 하기에는 참 많이 부족하다.

Garden in the Sky



In between Garden



Hybrid Garden

Alejandro Jodorowsky - Interview

엄청난 이미지들과 철학이 들어있는 그의 영화 "홀리 마운틴(Holy Mountain)"을 보고 Susan Sontag이 떠올랐다. 일루젼에서 깨어나와 현실을 보자는 마지막 감독의 선명한 말은 40년이 지난 지금 일루젼과 리얼리티의 혼돈으로 어디서 무엇을 깨어야는지 조차 불분명하여 다분히 촌스런 옛날 얘기처럼 들리기까지 한다.
그러나 이미지와 정보의 범람으로 내가 나로부터 소외되는 지금의 현실을 보면 그리 과거얘기로만 묻어두기엔 어딘지 예언자적 힌트가 숨어있는듯하다.

Wanderlust-the making of wanderlust

내 눈을 동그랗게 만든 엘레나 블로그에서 본 비요크의 새 뮤직비디오.
마치 비디오아트를 보는듯 설치미술을 보는듯 역시 비요크답다.
여기 만들기 과정을 보면 눈이 더욱 크게 떠진다.
Wanderlust - the making of wanderlust

This is awesome. It makes my eyes big.
If you want to see the video, go to elena's blog.
She wrote the lyrics also.

Fantastic Planet

스토리보다 재미있는 기이한 형태의 식물들과 거대한 파란 생물체의 행동 엿보기.
그림과 음악이 이처럼 하나되긴 힘들듯.
브라운톤의 배경과 거대 생물체의 파란색감이 회화적으로도 돋보이게 한다.

Peep at the mysterious plants and the behaviour of the giant blue creature.

Pompoko

Beside the message about the environment, I love this movie that racoons have magical powers to transform into human and the lyrics are powerful.

Is Painting Small the Next Big Thing? --The New York Times

This article published April 19, 2008.

"But what is marginalized can also become a form of dissent, a way to counter the prevailing arguments and sidestep their pitfalls. It is hard, for example, to work small and indulge in the mind-boggling degree of spectacle that afflicts so much art today. In a time of glut and waste on every front, compression and economy have undeniable appeal. And if a great work of art is one that is essential in all its parts, that has nothing superfluous or that can be subtracted, working small may improve the odds."

After Jackson Pollock, big size painting was fashion among painters. As an indigent young artist, this article gives me a smile.

Jacques Henri Lartigue

Jacques Henri Lartigue (1894-1986)
French photographer and painter.
He is obsessive with cathing time as it pass.
His photographs were seen in 1962 by John Szarkowski, directer of Museum of Modern Art in New York when Lartigue was in his seventies.
Such subjects as automobile races, fashionable ladies at the seashore and the park, and kite flying, these photographs with every day subjects reveal his free spirit and love of life. Specially, those photographs capturing a sense of movement made me feel a sense of humor.

The meaning of Art

The meaning of art from "Creature Comforts" claymation.

White Angel Breadline

Dorothea Lange's "White Angel Breadline" showed the desperate conditions of jobless men during the Great Depression.

Near Lange’s studio a rich woman who was called the White Angel had set up a breadline for the hungry. A man in worn out clothes and hat was leaning against a wooden barrier and looking down. His hands were folded on top of a fence and there was a tin cup between his arms.

When she took the photograph, she had no idea what to do with it. Then more and more she gave herself to do this documentary. It turned out to be the beginning of a new phase in her career. From a protrait photorapher for rich people to a documantary photographer.

Un Chien Andalou

The famous opening scene, the full moon and a woman’s eye being cut shocked me again.

But the most intersting scene was the one with ants at this time. In Dali’s painting, "The Persistence of Memory," ants were on the pocket watch. The pocket watch with ants was not meting but the other of clocks were melting away. The ants show immortality.

In the film, another scene, a male's hand caught and was being pushed in a door. The hand waved to come out of the door, and ants in the hand began to move away from the center of the palm. Here in this part of the film, the characters looked at the ants curiously with questioning eyes. It seems to me the ants show human being's struggles about life and searching the meaning of life.

Influenced by

1.Kunisada’s print, the Series of Famous restaurants of the present day, Untitled 15x9.75,1820

2.Whistler’s painting, Arrangement in Grey and Black N.1:
The Artist’s Mother, 1872

3.White’s photograph, The Mirror, 1912

The pictures have similarities in their works.
Using the perspective of Japanese prints suggests limited depth to emphasize the position of the subject in relation to the background. All of them have picture frames or windows at the top of the work and minimized pictorial elements.

Clarence H. White was an Amerian photographer and he was a member of Photo-Secession which was the name of a group of photographers that promoted the Pictorialism, a fine-art approach to photograph. Clarence White's The Mirrior chracterized by his use of light and nonphotographic effects - tried to make a photograph look like a painting.

Whistler was influenced by Japanese prints. White was influenced by both.
Artists are always aware of other artists and inspired by them and in turn inspire others.

Alice

Here is a film "Alice" which is depressing, helpless, dark and not very cheerful by a Czech film maker, Jan Svankmajer. It presents Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in a different way. Alice is exploring a creepy, confusing and bizarre environment. The environment could be the dark place in our mind or the place where we live now.



Another film by Jan Svankmajer, "Darkness/Light/Darkness"

William Anastasi

Time is an interesting concept; people try to give their lives a sense of order and try to exercise some control over their lives. “Out of Time” was a well-orchestrated group exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, 2006. The exhibition raised the issue of the relationship between time and people. The show focused on variations on the theme of time. It was poetic and political.

For example, in William Anastasi’s 60 Minutes, time was used as an element of physics; it is rigid and linear.

In Anastasi's early work, Nine Polaroid Portraits of a Mirror, 1967, time divided into smaller parts and became an endless labyrinth. It shows the ironic tension of reality and nonlinear time.

Elliott Hundley

Elliott hundley had a show at Andrea Rosen Gallery 2007. Hundley uses multiple mediums merging sculpture, painting and photography. His works are shown in New Museum now.

Lesley Dill's Kite

Lesley Dill made a 10-foot handmade paper kite which is called Healing Man with a kite expert in 2006. The magazine Hand Papermaking commissioned Dill to make the kite.

A Dream of a Butterfly

...Denying temporal succession, denying the self, denying the astronomical universe, are apparent desperations and secret consolations. Our destiny is not frightful by being unreal; it is frightful because it is irreversible and iron-clad. Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire. The world, unfortunately, is real; I, unfortunately, am Borges.
-Essay: Jorge Luise Borges, "A New Refutation of Time," 1946

I try to assimilate and fit in with my surroundings.
I want to become receptive and transparent.
But I still struggle with my new surroungings.
I am naver quite satisfied.

The story of Taoist Zhuang Zhou (Chuang Chou) (370-286 BC):
One of the most famous stories to be found in the Zhuangzi is the one found at the end of chapter 2: "Once Chuang Chou dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn't know he was Chuang Chou. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Chuang Chou. But he didn't know if he was Chuang Chou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang Chou. Between Chuang Chou and a butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things." (Basic Writings, p.45).

昔者 莊周夢爲胡蝶, 栩栩然胡蝶也 自喩適志與 不知周也.
俄然覺 則蘧蘧然周也 不知周之夢爲胡蝶與 胡蝶之夢爲周與?
則必有分矣. 此之爲物化.

"장자"의 〈제물론편(齊物論篇)〉에 나오는 이야기. 장자가 어느 날 꿈을 꾸었다. 나비가 되어 꽃들 사이를 즐겁게 날아다녔다. 그러다가 문득 깨어 보니, 자기는 분명 장주가 되어 있었다. 대체 장주인 자기가 꿈속에서 나비가 된 것인지, 아니면 나비가 꿈에 장주가 된 것인지를 구분할 수 없었다. 장주와 나비는 분명 별개의 것이건만 그 구별이 애매함은 무엇 때문일까? 이것은 사물이 변화하기 때문이다. 꿈이 현실인지 현실이 꿈인지, 도대체 그 사이에 어떤 구별이 있는 것인가? 장주와 나비 사이에는 피상적인 구별, 차이는 있어도 절대적인 변화는 없다. 장주가 곧 나비이고, 나비가 곧 장주라는 경지, 이것이 바로 여기서 말하고자 하는 세계이다. 물아의 구별이 없는 만물일체의 절대경지에서 보면 장주도 나비도, 꿈도 현실도 구별이 없다. 다만 보이는 것은 만물의 변화에 불과할 뿐인 것이다. 이처럼 피아(彼我)의 구별을 잊는 것, 또는 물아일체의 경지를 비유해 호접지몽이라 한다. 오늘날에는 인생의 덧없음을 비유해서 쓰이기도 한다. *네이버에서

Woman in the Dune

The movie Woman in the Dunes by the director Hiroshi Teshigahara is based on Kobo Abe's novel of the same name. The novel was published in 1962 and the film came out two years later.

The main characters, a woman and a man, live in a sand the dune and have to shovel the sand every night to prevent their home from collapsing. Unlike Sisyphus, they work to survive not as a punishment.

There are many allegories and methaphors in the movie. For example, the shifting sand is like the shifting nature of identity. At the end, the man found how to collect water from the dune; to me it seems like the concept of the absurd put forth by Albert Camus. Wet and dry, life and death, extrication and entanglement. I think I will read Camus's The Myth of Sisyphus again.

The Taste of Tea (茶の味 Cha no Aji)

The film is concerned with the lives of the Haruno family, who live in the countryside north of Tokyo. It has been referred to as a "surreal" version of Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander. *

The daughter, Shachiko, thinks that if she could do a backflip on a horizontal bar, she could get rid of her giant doppelganger,who is following her. She decides on this plan after hearing from her uncle how he got rid of a stranger covered in blood. Her situation reminds me of my childhood in the 1980s on the outskirts of Seoul where I grew up. The little floor in the house connecting the interior and exterior of the house, the undecorated and natural yard and the vacant lot (Shachiko practices her backflip on a horizontal bar in this area) near the house.....And of course, her struggle fascinated me. (Some a time growing up, I was scared that I thought my reflection in a mirror was another person looking at me.)

The Haruno Family
The Father, Nobuo: A hypnotherapist who occasionally hypnotizes his family for fun, and is teaching his son Go.
The Mother, Yoshiko: An animator trying to break back into the business by creating a hand drawn segment at the kitchen table.
The Son, Hajime: who is having a rough time with girls and puberty, but is an excellent Go player.
The Daughter, Sachiko: who is being followed by a giant duplicate of herself and searches for ways to rid herself of it.
The Uncle, Ayano: A sound engineer and record producer from Tokyo taking a break from things.
The Grandfather, Akira: an eccentric old man, former animator and occasional model for Yoshiko's animation.

Shadow

Before the invention of photography, camere obscura, camera lucida and physionotrace, which is a silhouette drawing traced from a shadow on a wall, were used for copying images. Nowdays, Kara Walker is known for silhouetted figures dealing with the issues of race, gender and sexuality.
One thousand years before the Song Dynasty (AD 960-1279) shadow shows appeared in China. By the 18th century, shadow shows were played in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, India, Egypt, Iran, Turkey and Western Europe with a distinct style. Shadow theater was popular in France in the 1770s. The silhouette figures were called "Chinese Shadows"(Ombres Chinoises) but the images were black silhouettes not like the colored shadows of Chinese shadow plays.
In early the 20th century, the German silhouette animator Lotte Reiniger, who was fascinated with the Chinese art of silhouette puppetry, made films using cut-out silhouettes. Here is her film "The Adventures of Prince Achmed-Harem Scene."

Whether the shadow shows were performed for religious education or entertainment,
I think that people are still fascinated by it because they are searching for their inner world, behind the screen and behind the layers of everyday reality.

MFA Group Show

For Immediate Release
NEW YORK - The Graduate Art Society of City College is pleased to announce an MFA group show titled Informants, opening Wednesday February 13th from 6-8 pm at the City College Art Gallery. Informants is an exploration in the symbiotic relationship that exists between source material and artistic 'objects.' This exhibition chooses to focus on revealing the source imagery, or informants, and in essence, hiding the artwork. Artists used their own discretion in what to share with the public, that which is normally considered to be private. Comprising of two parts, books and objects, this exhibition can be considered an interactive display. Viewers are encouraged to sit in the desks provided and read through the books available as well as observe the objects on the display tables.
A special email has been created for this show, informants@gmail.com, in hopes to further continue the conversation created by this exhibition. Your dialogue is invited.
MFA students participating are: Dennis Delgado, Filipa Farraia, Glenda Hydler, Jang Soon Im, Rachel Jobe, Seung Ae Kim, Sun Kim, Anthony Miler, Nancy Palubniak, Shani Peters, Tricia Riebesehl, Arthur Skowron, Elena Stojanova, Priska Wenger, and Yu Zhang.
Informants will be open to the public from 12 – 4 pm, Monday February 11th through Friday February 22nd at the City College Art Gallery, located in the ground floor of the Compton-Goethals Building, 1619 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY. A limited edition catalogue with opening essay by Anthony Miler and design by Rachel Jobe will be available.

New works from Shirin Neshat

In July, 2001, under a scorching sun, I travelled around Iran. I had to wear a head scarf and I had to cover most of my body as Muslim women do. At the begenning of my trip I felt sorry for the women I saw, but I soon realized that they found ways to express themselves and add some color to their lives. Occasionally, at a cafe, I could catch a glimpse of pretty and colorful clothes worn by a woman under the head-to-toe black hijab, and some women painted their fingernails or toe nails.
With those memories in mind, I found the show at the Gladstone Gallery by the artist, Shirin Neshat who was born in Iran to be extremely moving. Her video installation is based on the novel Women without Men by Shahrnush Parsipur which is about women in Iran. I look forward to reading this book.

Gladstone Gallery

NPR

Korean Kite (Yeon)

In Korean history, kite flying is traced back to 637 A.D., during the first year of the reign of Queen Chindok of Silla, when General Kim Yu-Sin used a kite to calm the agitated populace. He launced a kite in the night sky over Kyongju. The kite had a large cotton ball attached that was burning, causing the supertitious people to think it was a falling star soaring up in the sky, and that their misfortunes would soon come to a close. Another general in Korean history, General Ch'oe Yong, of the 14th-century Koryo period utilized kites for shooting fire arms. Admiral Yi Sun-sin used kites in the 16th century as a fast way to inform the naval troops of his strategic instructions, flying kites having different pictures signaling tactics to use, while fighting the Japanese invaders.

Click here to learn more about Korean Kite

Different from the history, I am going to make and decorate a kite and then film it as I fly it. It is going to be simple 10-minute film of the kite in the sky, following the movement of the kite. The film is going to play over and over on a screen hung on the ceiling of a gallery. To watch the movie, viewers will need to lie down on a large bench that is meant to represent the kind of platform that Koreans use outdoors for picnics. It is occasionally placed in the yard of a house or under a tree. The project is about sharing my memories of childhood with growing up on the outskirts of Seoul, Korea in 1970s and '80s.

The Korea Society

Toy Stories

Souvenirs from Korean Childhood

An Exhibition of Korean Toys from the 1970s and 1980s

January 31- April 18
The Korea Society Gallery
Open to the Public and Free of Charge

Location

950 Third Ave. Eighth Floor, New York City

(Building entrance on SW corner of Third Ave. and 57St.)

Toys-always more meaningful than the simple playthings they appear to be-can embody the fantasies, values, obsessions and anxieties of a generation......

To Have or to Be?

To Have or to Be
By Erich Fromm
The Importance of the Difference between Having and Being

For an M.F.A. group show, I have to exhibit objects and books that inspired my works or are related to it. But since my work is about searching for an inner world that cannot be easily represent in the visible world, it was a bit hard to choose objects.
The moments of awakening that I have experienced cannot be recreated in a gallery. Because such experience are invisible and cannot be touched.

"The words point to an experience; they are not the experience. The moment that I express what I experience exclusively in thought and words, the experience has gone: it has dried up, is dead, a mere thought. Hence being is indescribable in words and is communicable only by sharing my experience."

Erich Fromm Interview Excerpt from YouTube