| The NARS (New York Art Residency & Studio) Foundation is pleased to present a group exhibition of New York‐based Asian artists, featuring a site‐specific installation and drawings by Haeri Yoo; paintings by Jana Benitez and Zhang Yu; an oil painting installation by Taku Saito; and a video by Cao Yi.
Each of the works in WITHIN YOU WITHOUT YOU is a kind of self‐portrait that investigates the essential connection between the self and society; the dynamic is played out and transformed in the connection of each work to the others and to the exhibition as a whole. |
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April 9th – May 8th, 2011; Wednesday – Friday.
1pm – 5pmThird Floor
88 Thirtyfifth Street, Brooklyn
Each of the works in WITHIN YOU WITHOUT YOU is a kind of self‐portrait that investigates the essential connection between the self and society; the dynamic is played out and transformed in the connection of each work to the others and to the exhibition as a whole.
Inspired by the Modern European art tradition and the elegant gestures of martial arts movement, Jana Benitez expresses an interior world with her bold murals. Combining figurative and abstract symbols with uninhibited brush work, Benitez explores emotion in human faces and figures. Her images can evoke an intense yet whimsical quarrel between vibrant internal organs and a cogitating mind.
Cao Yi demonstrates solid skills in a wide variety of media including photography, drawing, and painting. The video of his photo series “Beauty in My Eyes” captures images of nature literally reflected in Cao’s eyes. His photographic gaze is insistent but illusory. Cao’s works invite viewers into a dialogue between the outer landscape and inner self.
Taku Saito’s self‐portraits, at first glance, appear to be emotionless, yet, the sense of isolation and determination is evident. The facial structure in the portrait is fragmented, dissolved into dripping oil. Intriguingly, the influence of manga style, and reminiscences of adolescent struggles are embedded in the paintings. Saito uses his face as the motif to represent social portraits of ordinary, everyday
lives, their unexpected distractions, chaotic incidents, and survival instincts.
Haeri Yoo’s drawings and site‐specific wall works explore human sexuality, bodily tensions, illicit thoughts and oppression. Yoo uses materials, including pencil, pastels, acrylic, handcrafted and found objects and spray paint as well as collage elements with an expressive energy. Blurring the boundary between abstraction and figurative depiction, her work segregates and playfully mutates reality. Beauty and violence, light and dark are left in an inconclusive, disharmonious impasse.
