A Quiet Space in a Busy City: Meditation in New York @ Broadway Gallery – By Lori Ortiz

To meditate, the mind must be emptied and the trials and tribulations of the day replaced with a more singular focus or image—a still image, a challenging task in our faced paced city.

A Quiet Space in a Busy City: Meditation in New York @ Broadway Gallery

By Lori Ortiz

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To meditate, the mind must be emptied and the trials and tribulations of the day replaced with a more singular focus or image—a still image, a challenging task in our faced paced city. Most of the nineteen objects in this exhibit are small but offer the viewer ample opportunity to meditate on each artist’s offering. This exhibit’s deferent tone and soothingly predictable rhythm befits the theme. Curator Elizabeth Park’s meditative vision is as well crafted as its individual works, creating a consistent tone throughout the show.

In Katerina Wong’s diptych, the wall separates two rectangular pieces, twin tower like panels. Can we help but see them as such? The sensual monochrome black sumi ink surface is etched and richly articulated—a stunning meditation on absence. Meeok Paik’s impasto Klein blue panels embrace and also separate a smaller raw canvas ‘stripe’ in her distillation entitled life. A floor piece byT amiko Kawata called Pueblo consists of three assemblages of safety pins woven in a repetitive pattern that uses the open spaces of the parquet floor as a foil. It fills the space grandly despite its minimal materials. Andra Samuelson’s works on paper weave lines in an obsessive amd contemplative two-dimensional version of basketry. One is an obsessively penned but still amorphous vessel-like shape. The other depicts a more decomposed form, but nonetheless is a "pigment print" made up of striking white lines on a solid rich blue. Almost in the style of digitally or mechanically generated pictures, this one is achingly, but perfectly handmade.

Though visual art by default depends on light, several of the works interact with the room’s light for their primary effect. Nami Yamamoto’s hand-cut pretzel shapes are perfect enough to be machine made. Shadows complete the layered three dimensions as each individual foam piece couples with its abstracted gray partner. She also includes a drawing on translucent mylar.

Linda Pelaez’s bas-relief borrows color from light falling on sequins that jutout from its surface. Seductive illusions of depth and translucency are created in Jin Lee’s finely painted intricate web and in Harvey Brock’s marker painting with vestigial patterns. Seongmin Ahn’s meticulously folded rice paper sheets are framed in such a way as to reduce the play of light that would bring out their drama and delicacy. On a modest scale, Lily Prince’s smoke drawings, and the more traditional painted abstractions by Ensook Kim, evoke a slow moving atmosphere. Kim uses gold white and blackwash with a sensitive hand intimating a bird, sky or water. Intra-net is a sandwich sized square with layers of color, texture, and glass. Its surface is painted with a magically unfurling geometric flower form. We are treated to four such pieces made by Jingook Suh.

Park assembles elements of light and dark, negative and positive space, and repetitive process to create her engaging "Meditation in New York."