Blurring the Lines: Breathing Exhibit at The Sylvia Wald and Po Kim Gallery

In a world that is increasingly inundated with media, the last exhibition at the The Sylvia Wald and Po Kim Gallery allows for a due respite.  Aptly titled “Breathing,” the exhibit gathered twelve national and international artists creating a cross-cultural dialogue. If the heyday of multiculturalism can offer us a new perspective, it lies in its ability to create interactivity without de-legitimizing other forms of expression.  The resoluteness of ideology also tends to wane in the face of marked relativism.  “Breathing,” curated by Soo Jung Hyun, brings together a cross section of artists whose work has cultural specificity yet blurs this partition by way of its curatorial thesis.  Acculturation is the name of the game, and the results are compelling.  

Shaped like a railroad with cul-de-sac bookends, the gallery allows one to literally breath and circulate, propelling the viewer through its cavity.  The work on display has a clear engagement with East Asian aesthetics and philosophy. The twelve artists included here all come from different cultural backgrounds, different multicultural experiences, and different nations. These include France, Japan, China, Argentina, Korea, and the United States.  Upon entering, one notices that the show has a prevailing sense of lightness, most notable in the work of Korean artist, Sung Ho Choi. Born in Seoul, Korea, Sung Ho choi has lived and worked in New York metropolitan area since 1981. He fashions his observations out of the materials available to him. Choi’s mixed media painting entitled Dreamscape, utilizes a shallow grid made of lottery tickets on top of which lies crashing waves.  The dynamic struck between the primordial, majestic waves overlaid on the serialized, contemporary lottery tickets, form an ironic counterpoint to the notion of materiality.  This work highlights the intersection of logic and emotion.  These patterns crash, collide, destroy and affirm one another within the same image.  It brings to mind how often we are in the midst of contradictory impulses, namely between our natural environment and an omnipresent mass culture.  At the precipice of globalization we find ourselves at the forefront of a cultural stand off.  When posited up against one another, these formal propositions create a third place within the painting.  It is one of great psychological tension.

Robert C. Morgan’s The Impossible #2, also stand out as a distinctly, intimate image that is curiously deceptive.  Morgan’s extensive relationship to Eastern thought is particularly evident in this work.  Using a small scale, 14”x18”, and primarily flat color, it appears firstly as a geometric painting.  On further observation the paint, metallic and polymer on canvas, calls attention to its variations.  The iridescent, shimmering quality of the metallic paint gives significant presence to what otherwise would be flat expanses.  Morgan uses this gloss to offset the polymer edge of the deep, industrial brown polygonal form.  These forms seem to visually separate, lying on different planes, yet coalesce to form a cohesive whole when one backs away.  The color shifts, and the pictorial divisions resonate with a repetitive, meditative quality. Morgan’s poignant work conjures up notions of singularity within disparate parts.  

New York is in a unique position in that it offers a way forward in terms of its capacity for diversity, yet only if we are willing to absorb the changing cultural environment.  Finding our way on the cultural carousel, “Breathing” creates a platform for an engaging hybridism.

Breathing was curated by Soojung Hyun Ph.D (Guest Curator of the Sylvia Wald & Po Kim Art Gallery) March 29 – April 26, 2011

Particpating artists: Alain Kirili, Byoung Ok Min, Choong Sup Lim, KyungWoo Han, MiKyung Kim, Po Kim, Rakuko Naito, Raquel Rabinovich, Robert C. Morgan, Ruth Hardinger, Shen Chen, SungHo Choi.