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Jairo Alfonso, 386, 2

Dear Abraham,

Gallery 8 New York opens in Harlem next Thursday with an inaugural exhibition 17 Cuban artists from FACTION Art Projects.

The exhibition, All That You Have Is Your Soul (Feb 2 – March 10) curated by Armando Marino and Meyken Barreto is a group show of 17 artists, all of whom are tied together by their responses to building identity within a foreign land. The exhibition uses the link of heritage between the artists to present artworks that celebrate difference in identity. Each artist in the show has some relationship to Cuba, some island-born emigres, some with careers developed in Cuba and others with more distant descendants. This starting point, a key point of identity for some, but not for others, offers a tangible bond in their linked roots, but the overriding premise is that as a group they mean to redefine themselves within their unique circumstance.

Artists exhibiting:

Alejandro Aguilera, Anthony Goicolea, Armando Mariño, Ariel Cabrera Montejo, Elsa Mora, Enrique De Molina, Ernesto Pujol, Geandy Pavon, Jairo Alfonso, Juan Carlos Quintana, Juan Miguel Pozo, Juana Valdes Maria Magdalena Campos Pons, Marc Dennis, Maritza Molina, Marta Maria Perez, Pavel Acosta, Quisqueya Henriquez

Throughout the show FACTION will seek to engage with local communities of the Harlem neighborhood. This will include a series of School Workshops, Curators’ Talks, a Neighborhood Welcoming Day, Artist Workshops, Panel Discussions and a Cuban Cultural Evening.
FACTION provides artists with promotion and opportunity to access collectors and a wider audience, with all the support of a gallery but without the constraints of the traditional model. FACTION is a new flexible collective, from the team behind the hugely successful Gallery 8 and Coates & Scarry in London, who in this, their foray into the US, are adapting a unique model for artists and gallerists to work together.

All the very best,

Anna

Thanks and congratulation on a significant program and exhibit.

Abraham Lubelski

Editor / Publisher

Press Release

Geandy Pavon, Wrinkled Wing, 201

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Abortion is our country’s Scarlet Letter, an impassioned “A” writ large on our conscience. We shame, blame and deny women their right to self-determination to live, love and when to have or not have children. Although this January is the 45th year anniversary of the Supreme Court Ruling legalizing abortion, there have been, as of last count, 401 rollbacks across the country making it very difficult, and in many cases impossible for women to elect this choice. What can we do about this?

We can march, write articles, sign petitions, hold direct actions We can invent related hashtags like #MeToo–what greater sexual harassment in there than defining what a woman can do with her body? And we can make art. But what might art about abortion look like? What might it accomplish? These are the questions Barbara Zucker explores in “Currents: Abortion” an ambitious exhibit she curated at the A.I.R. Gallery.

Barbara Zucker, artist, writer and activist, is a co-founder of A.I.R. Gallery, established in 1972 as the first not-for-profit, artist-directed and maintained gallery for women artists in the United States.

In my interview with her, Zucker said, “Abortion is talked and written about, but there’s not much art about it. It almost seems taboo. Several artists I approached to do an artwork said “’No’.”

This exhibit is a visual compendium and unfolding of the issues, stories, meanings, and history embedded in one word: Abortion. The 70 works selected from the over 160 submissions, are the artists’ response to a series of questions posed by Zucker.

In selecting the works, Zucker said that “I didn’t know what I was looking for but I knew I didn’t want the usual tropes of hangers, nor large amounts of blood. Nothing specific.” She want

ed works that were “thought provoking, reflecting different states of mind, speaking in different voices.”

Two of A.I.R.’s three galleries, entrance and back hall, are richly filled with works in a breathtaking range of mediums: paintings, drawings, prints, etchings, photographs, collage, sculpture, mixed-media constructions, and a monitor showing several videos. Zucker doesn’t seem to impose any apparent “ordering” of the work. All media, all viewpoints, views and experiences are exhibited together, demanding equal attention–a sisterhood of Me Too. The effect is that of “a visual conversation” representing all the varied experiences women have and have had regarding abortion This not a quiet exhibit. It fairly shouts at you—you hear the different visual voices, experiences, stories, cries and whispers of defiance, anger, pain, sadness, longing, shame, regret, outrage __”the full catastrophe”.

Zucker believes this show is an opportunity for us to listen to artists who have chosen to give voice to their “emotions and perceptions about this subject. You will find depictions of choice, loss, and anger; of fecundity, of disease. There are images of helplessness and images of power. There is work that reaches into the past to demonstrate ways in which women used abortifacients. There is work that is pro-life as well as work that is religious.”

She observes that those who are pro-choice are as passionate as those who are not. “I believe all of us are pro-life: it is the definition of the term that is not the same. Herein lies the dilemma. How do we ever bridge this divide?”

Though much has been written about abortion, there has

not been much visual art. Through this exhibit, Zucker hopes to get people to see the visual and have it be as important as the words. Art, she believes, is a powerful bridge that can engender a kind of “visual dialogue.”

Barbara Zucker’s introduction to the exhibit profoundly states that “Art is visual listening.” She continues with “We use all of our senses to listen and to understand. In this turbulent moment in history, the ability to listen to one another has become a matter of urgency.” “Currents: Abortion” reflects these complexities and is larger than pro and con, yes and no. It goes to the heart of who we are and how we want to be as individuals and as a nation. This exhibit shows us how the personal is political.

Indira Cesarine ACT NOW

Yael Ben-Zion: Photograph Detail 2017 Cemetry at Trinity Church “In Loving Memory of All The Victims of Abortion”

Rosa Naparstek      January 22, 2018

 ____________________________________________________

Participating artists:

Adrienne Jenkins, Alexander Bernon, Amy Cannestra, Amy Finkbeiner, Anne Ferrer, Audrey Anastasi, Bernadette Despujols, Cali Kurlan, Catherine Hall & Meg Lipke, Charlotte Woolf, Christophe Lima, Coco Hall, Cristin Millet, Cynthia Winika, d’Anne de Simone, Dani Sigler, Danielle Siegelbaum, Deborah Wasserman, Devra Fox, Divine Williams, Dottie Attie, Elaine Angelopoulos, Elke Solomon, Ellen Jong, Eugenia Pigassiou, Gina Randazzo , Grace Burney, Greta Young, Heather Saunders & Cassandra, Heather Weathers, Ilona Granet, Indira Cesarine, Irene Gennaro, Jane Zweibel, Jessica Nissen, Julia Kim Smith , Julia Buck, Justine Walker, Karen Meersohn, Kathy Grove, Katrina Majkut, Lannie Hart, Leslie Fry, Leslie Tucker, Megan Pickering, Marie Tomanova, Martha Edelheit, Martha Fleming Ives, Maureen Connor, Mira Schor, Nadine Faraj, Nancy Hellebrand, Nancy Lasar, Nina Meledandri, Parastoo Ahoon, Pat Lasch, Perri Nerri, Rachel Lindsay, Rachel Portesi, Robin Adsit, Robin Jordan, Robin Tewes, Rosemary Meza DesPlas, Ruth Owens, Sabra Moore, Sooyeon Yun, Susan Carr, Valerie Hallier, Virginia Carey, Yael Ben Zion

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Pat Lasch, HV: Four Pregnancies: Two Births, 2014, polymer acrylic paints, pearls, and glass beads, 46″h x 24″ w

CURRENTS an exhibition in which artists respond to the theme of ABORTION. In this turbulent moment in history, abortion remains a signifier of people’s ownership over their bodies, being as urgent a subject as any of the issues that now consume us.

The exhibition includes depictions of choice, loss, and anger; works of fecundity, disease, shame, and pain; images of helplessness and of power. There are pieces that reach into the past to demonstrate ways in which women used abortifacients, as well as work that is pro life and religious. All these propositions are united in the gallery to create a space in which we listen to each other.

Participating artists:
Adrienne Jenkins, Alexander Bernon, Amy Cannestra, Amy Finkbeiner, Anne Ferrer, Audrey Anastasi, Bernadette Despujols, Cali Kurlan, Catherine Hall & Meg Lipke, Charlotte Woolf, Christophe Lima, Coco Hall, Cristin Millet, Cynthia Winika, d’Anne de Simone, Dani Sigler, Danielle Siegelbaum, Deborah Wasserman, Devra Fox, Divine Williams, Dottie Attie, Elaine Angelopoulos, Elke Solomon, Ellen Jong, Eugenia Pigassiou, Gina Randazzo , Grace Burney, Greta Young, Heather Saunders & Cassandra, Heather Weathers, Ilona Granet, Indira Cesarine, Irene Gennaro, Jane Zweibel, Jessica Nissen, Julia Kim Smith , Julia Buck, Justine Walker, Karen Meersohn, Kathy Grove, Katrina Majkut, Lannie Hart, Leslie Fry, Leslie Tucker, Megan Pickering, Marie Tomanova, Martha Edelheit, Martha Fleming-Ives, Maureen Connor, Mira Schor, Nadine Faraj, Nancy Hellebrand, Nancy Lasar, Nina Meledandri, Parastoo Ahoon, Pat Lasch, Perri Nerri, Rachel Lindsay, Rachel Portesi, Robin Adsit, Robin Jordan, Robin Tewes, Rosemary Meza-DesPlas, Ruth Owens, Sabra Moore, Sooyeon Yun, Susan Carr, Valerie Hallier, Virginia Carey, Yael Ben-Zion.

Curated by Barbara Zucker.

Public Programs
January 6, 1pm : The Beginning Choice performance by Parastoo Ahoon
January 7, 2-5 pm : With Women Workshop: Reproductive Self Determination and Autonomous Women’s Health-Care , Maureen Connor and others.
January 12, 19, and 25, 2-6pm : Y our Story , readers will read from personal abortion stories submitted to the gallery
Confirmed readers: Joyce Kozloff, Elke Solomon, Gina Zucker, Nancy Cohen, Patricia Hernandez, Donna Kaz and Joanne Howard

 

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On April 20, at 7 PM, within the celebrations of the Year of Avant-Garde, marking a centenary of avant-garde in Poland, together with the Foundation Editions Spotkania, we would like to invite you to the vernissage of exhibition titled „Jan Młodożeniec. Small, grand works”(Jan Młodożeniec. Małe wielkie prace).

Jan Młodżeniec, a world-famous poster artist, is classed, next to Henryk Tomaszewki, Jan Lenica, Waldemar Świerzy and Roman Cieślewicz, as one of the “founding fathers” of the renowned Polish school of poster. His works are distinguished by their cheerful, oftentimes jocular atmosphere, warm colourway, excellent use of light and his very own stroke style. The exhibition, drawing from the private collection of the artist’s sons, a graphic designer, Piotr Młodożeniec, and a painter, Stanisław Młodożeniec, presents works on paper, gouaches illustrating everyday creative work of Jan Młodożeniec.

The collection of the Film Museum contains more than 100 original posters of the extensive achievement of the artist. The oldest work dates back to 1952 and was created for film Utro nad Rodinata (Spieniony nurt) directed by Anton Marinovich. Works chosen from our collection by the son, Piotr, comprise part of the exhibition supplementing private “Small, grand works” with a section of Jan Młodożeniec work consisting in film poster design. They include signature and well-known posters for films such as: Once Upon a Time in America (Dawno temu w Ameryce) dir. Sergio Leone, The Conformist (Konformista) dir. Bernardo Bertolucci or Blue Velvet dir. David Lynch. There is also a poster from Piotr Szulkin’s film titled King Ubu (Ubu Król) which was used by the director in 2003, already after the designer’s death. Jan Młodożeniec was fascinated by the character of Alfred Jarry’s drama and in 1990s created a series of 40 portraits of the title King Ubu.
Exhibition in the Film Museum, prepared under the Year of the Avant-Garde to mark a centenary of avant-garde in Poland, has also been enriched with innovative, futuristic poetry of Stanisław Młodożeniec, Jan’s father and grandfather of Piotr and Stanisław. In this way the background of artistic work by Jan Młodożeniec at our exhibition is the wing devoted to avant-garde poems by an artist of the earlier generation. The second exhibition wing presents the works for the next generation artists – Jan’s sons. The exhibition showcases two paintings by Stanisław, painted on the basis of photographs. One of them presents Stanisław’s grandfather with his friend Jarema, and the other one – Jan with his sons: Piotr and Stanisław. We will also present an animated film by Piotr inspired by his grandfather’s poem “Futurobnia”.

“Jan Młodożeniec. Small, grand works” (Jan Młodożeniec. Małe wielkie prace).
Exhibition Vernissage: 20 April at 7 PM
Film Museum in Łódź
Pl. Zwycięstwa 1

Free entrance

Learn More

www.kinomuzeum.pl

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The short answer, which we have lived with for 100 years is the self and a community. That is, individual determination and communal validation. Often the latter helps along the former, and vice versa. One’s desire to make followed up by a willingness or drive to share it, collides with a community, be it esoteric, academic, or market driven, who’s affirmation propels forward to art-dom. This narrative can be reversed of course, as we have seen with the quilts of Gee’s Bend.

In the current three-person exhibition at Portland, Oregon’s Adams and Ollman both roads, self determination and institutional validation, have been traveled. On display are works from Acharya Vyakul, Chris Johanson, and Chris Corales. Three artists who’s work, in production and/or content, involve the meditative.

For the Indian painter Acharya Vyakul (1930-2000) the meditation or inspiration to create was a wholly spiritual endeavor.  In the tradition of Tantric paintings, Vyakul’s works were all created in the throes of divine ecstasy. The four small pieces here, the largest still under 12 inches, range from a central focus pointed concentric triangle in red, oddly cropped at the top of the page, to receding tubular forms in two-tone lavender, as well as abstracted calligraphy. The page is barely able to contain these forms. The works are all dated circa 1990, the year after Vyakul was first exhibited in the controversial Magiciens de la Terre at the Centre Pompidou, curated by Jean-Hubert Martin, on the heals of 1989 NY MOMA show, Primitivism. This was an exhibit Martin wished to distance himself from as he saw it as more of the same old Western colonialism. While looking at Vyakul’s paintings one can’t help but think of his state of mind at the times of their creation. The immediacy of the line, coupled with the quirky compositions, run counter to the delicacy of the palette, resulting in a vibration upon the viewer’s sensibility.

Immediacy is a hallmark in the paintings and installations of Chris Johanson. Since the mid 1990’s, through his sprawling installation, which extended into in the stairwell in the 2002 Whitney Biennial, to his more recent sallies into abstraction, as well as his musical output with bands such as Sun Foot, he has constantly given us an honest reflection of society. His work, as Jon Raymond wrote so succinctly, “is both corrosive and deeply sympathetic, burning with irony but never outright judgment.” On view are examples of his wit, floating from the mind of simply painted men who’s sage quips burst out of cartoon speech bubbles. His tone ranges from the potent, That bump in the road was sure a bump in the road, 1999-2013, to chilling, as in the painting Selfish expressionism #1, 1994-2013. Here a nude man in a non-Euclidean spaces wonders, “Is today a good day to shave off some of my medication?” Also included are two of his abstractions. One What is or can be, 2013 is done in Johanson’s version of a refined style, brightly colored and skewed geometry. The other Everywhere you look, 1994-2013, blends more of his cartoony style and pastel passion with a spatial delineation made of wispy marks, evoking the 1911 compositions of Wassily Kandinsky.

The delicate abstract collages of Chris Corales also conjure the work of the early 20^th century avant-guarde. Corales is a collector of fine and prosaic vintage paper which he utilizes in skinny slivers and square chunks as in formal explorations of compositional space.  Here worn and faded record sleeves for 78’s are cut short, and accented with half circular tabs of reds, blues, and whites. The arrangements are landscapish forms and repeat in a series titled, Dune Kiosk (1-4) 2013.  The paper exudes a material history: time has left their color and finish bleached, and some contain faint sun-spotted patterns. The colors on the tabs are rich and flat, though differing high fiber content provides lovely texture for the careful viewer. Corales is currently living in Philadelphia, but hails form the same punk DIY Bay Area scene as Johanson. While one would shy away from placing Corales in the late 1990’s Mission School, there are correspondences in his reuse practice, passion for color, and intense work ethic. Not to mention the shared community and camaraderie, which spurred them both past the Art border guards and towards lasting careers.

This exhibition provides a platform for aesthetic pleasure and philosophical thought regarding the path that images, objects, and people have to traverse in order to attain the title of Art and Artists.

Mack McFarland is an artist and curator at the Pacific Northwest College of Art’s Philip Feldman Gallery + Project Space.

adamsandollman.com

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What’s unique about The String and the Mirror is its focus: unlike the survey of the field of sound currently on view at the MoMA, the 19 artists in this show are more interested in relationships than form, and in transmutations or tangents rather than technology. The artists were chosen by Justin Luke, director of Audio Visual Arts, and Lawrence Kumpf, who curates Issue Project Room.

The String and the Mirror is an exhibition that explores and purposefully tangles our relationships with sound. Lenticular prints, raw record vinyl piles, arranged bamboo, decibel meters, an audio cable diptych spelling out hey, and stones conversing are a few of the objects employed to accomplish this goal.

Artists pushed various aspects of sound into the tangible, creating what was largely a visual experience. How do you make the aural into a physical object? Data sonification is one way, seen here in Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s Conflicted Phonemes. In this project Hamdan creates a visual to complicate our notion of how languages in a country—particularly one with as troubled a background as Somalia’s—can change and torque over time. While many of the works in this show have a playful tone, Conflicting Phonemes hits a little harder. Here the artist creates a complex voice map that is at first difficult to fully comprehend. The goal: to work toward understanding the controversial use of language analysis employed by the government to determine the origin of asylum seekers. Hamdan’s voice maps act as offerings to the asylum seeker as “alternative and non-vocal mode of contestation.”

One example of how are relationships with noise are snarled is Two Stones Singing, a concise piece by Rolf Julias that used electronics to displace sounds found in nature—in a forest field, to be exact—and appropriated them to two stones. Rocks represent nature to us, yet it bends the mind to hear this information rather than to register it through thought.

Another piece makes suggestions for experiencing sound. Four proposals are printed on the wall below titles. Spencer Yeh, the artist, calls these Bad Ideas for a Sound Mind. To me these pieces are about reducing the irreducible—recording a noise and then reintroducing the noise to its origin, as in the idea below:

One Hundred Dollar Bills

One hundred $1 bills are buried under
a ceramic tile floor. Participants are
encouraged to treasure-hunt these with
contact mic’d dentist drills, but must wear
headphones playing the sound from the
drills while doing so.

Another striking piece was one hundred circles for the mind by Seth Cluett. This was framed as a repeatable experiment meant for propagation, with instructions and a list of materials. Sound here is a tangible object made to mimic the drawn circles. Cluett recorded himself drawing one hundred circles on separate pieces of paper and then listened to the recording. He removed the cassette tape from the tape housing, sliced it into 100 pieces, and carefully placed these pieces in a grid on the wall next to the circles on 100 pieces of paper. So, we have the sound of these circles’ conception mirroring the circles themselves.

At the back of the main gallery space there is a second room containing an ongoing interactive installation. This is Office Riddim, created by the New York-based duo Essex Olivares. Surprisingly, it’s an office with all the familiar objects in it that identify it to be so: paper, filing cabinets, a desk, plants, desk chairs, a water cooler. Other elements indicate that this is an office meant to destabilize the traditional, sterile office ambience, such as a bench with soft grey fur and a distorted ‘smile you’re on camera sign.’ A television records the room in real time.

“We have created a system,” a paper on the wall says. “A system that responds to you,” says another. “Release your mind, feel the present,” says a third. Other instructions, which you’re meant to do with a partner, urge you to “line the perimeter of your body with binder clips. Divide yourself in half.” It’s strangely relaxing being in someone else’s office. There’s a freedom in being asked to stuff your pockets with paper clips. Another suggestion reads, “lace an extension cord through the other user’s chair. Keeping both ends of the cord in hand, take a seat on the table.” The duo intended this work to examine how musical scores relate to start-up companies.

The overall effect of The String and the Mirror is the feeling of tension between aural stimuli and the way they are translated from oral to visual. There’s a kind of slippage that happens when your expectations are denied, and this slippage can often be the most pleasurable part of the experience. Altogether this show is an elegant and interrogative push for reexamining our experiential world through sound.

By Maria Anderson

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Gonzales undermines his formal arrangements with a sense of play. Simultaneously, he brings in San Francisco’s visual culture through his use of locally found materials. The copy-cut-paste cycles that are incorporated into collage make his work not only a reflection of our time or place, but also a reflection of a personal culture that is unique to Gonzalez. He employs materials that have been scouted from the streets of his hometown San Francisco.  A sense of identification arises upon viewing his series of collages in yellow containg textual information that point to the San Francisco MOMA, the Meridian Gallery, the Art Institute, the De Young Museum and to local businesses.

Not all of the collages contain text, however. There is a room donned with all-white compositions with titles such as Beauty, Paleness and Minima Moralia. These pieces essentially reflect Robert Ryman’s interest in whites and Louis Nevelson’s white wood works, such as Dawn’s Wedding Chapel IV. However, Gonzalez’s works function as small-nested paper pieces that are rectilinearly formatted in composition. The interplay of white upon white brings the viewer’s perceptions into tight focus with the use of subtle colorations that incite intrigue. The tonal qualities and brightness variations are masterful in their expression.

Another room filled with all black collages display titles such as November, Fresh and Cult of Beauty. The viewer is immersed into these miniaturized, intimate fields with multiple variants of black. The works containing text draw one in to examine typographical features. They become a reference and a marker of our visual culture, while concurrently creating them. Most edges are clean and crisply defined with geometric shapes coalescing into a grid. This is quite fitting, as the found paper pieces that flood the collage are from an urban setting.

The multiple small paper works hold their fragments tightly in the center at times. To differentiate, other collages spread across the entire page to create a nominal sense of boundarylessness. Are these avenues employed to create meaning or are they instead a meandering of experimentation—or are they both? The question remains unresolved.

Not all of the works in this exhibition are monochromatic. Small sets of multi-colored paper collages engage us near the entry—exhibiting bright blues, lime greens, yellows, oranges, reds and more. The exciting stimulation of color with various interactions is found within tiny, enclosed spaces. The synthesis of color and varying intensities are just another avenue Gonzalez explores. This is mirrored in a number of his wood collages, such as in the simply titled #2. Strips of colored wood present a grid-like framework that overlays collaged paper—this time with torn paper pieces. Organic meets mechanic in this particular all-over composition—a synthesis of disparate parts.

It will be of interest to follow future, formal explorations of Matt Gonzalez. His work is connected to artistic traditions of the past and future. Gonzalez makes collage a new and experimental medium, as he references visual culture and the identity of a specific place whether seen in found materials or layered typography. The formal approach he engages is endless, yet non-repetitive. Gonzalez is sure to continue producing surprising results.

By. Kathryn Arnold

themattgonzalezreader.wordpress.com

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The exhibit was comprised of three parts: photographs of the Roden Crater, bronze and plaster models of areas within the crater, and fifteen Autonomous Structures.  These freestanding chambers are inspired by ancient structures like Machu Picchu, where the Incas built rooms and named them for the viewing experience each created for its visitors. They are: the Hitching Post of the Sun, the Temple of the Sun, and the Room of Three Windows.  The goal behind the Roden Crater and these structures is to create spaces in which intergalactic light and cosmic movement can be experienced.

After becoming a pilot at 16, Turrell delivered supplies to remote mine sites and mapped the skies.  At a young age, he became used to perceiving the earth from above, seeing the photons around it.

“We live within this reality we create, and we’re quite unaware of how we create the reality. So the work is often a general koan into how we go about forming this world in which we live, in particular with seeing,” he told Interview Magazine in 2009.

Turrell calls for experiencing nature in a more profound way. He has called us light-eaters, crustaceans, people who build and become cities. With the Roden Crater he’s showing us how to crack open our surroundings and reach for that kernel inside us that promises the light we ate was not wasted.

by Maria Anderson

pacegallery.com

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DARU-Jung Hyang Kim is a painter and public installation artist who has lived and worked in New York since 1977.  She is one of the pioneers of Korean-American art. Kim was accepted into the graduate program of fine arts at Pratt Institute and earned her MFA in 1980. During this period, Kim absorbed many new ideas through her interaction with international artists in New York. Since then, she has maintained a clear direction in her creative experimentation and exploration of new mediums. Her earlier works are diptychs that employ two styles of painting: figuration and abstraction. These opposing elements present different perspectives in her work. In formal terms, her paintings reveal a synthesis between the two. She seeks her own way by creating unique forms that are fundamentally connected to the fluidity of nature and humanist concerns.

In 2013, Kim presented ten paintings in her solo show at Gallery Ho in West Chelsea. These recent works of Kim echo the basic theme on which she has worked over the past three decades. Abstract forms and figurative imagery are integrated on one canvas. Here Kim continues her exploration of abstract forms and shapes as abstraction becomes more predominant in her work. The largest work in this show, Listening Figure-moonlight (2013) focuses on circles and curvilinear shapes overlaid on one another or spread across the surface of the canvas. The circle as an abstract form transmits nuances and offers a rhythmical cadence. Circles are full of spatial volume like the variations in Baroque music. Another work, Listening-swirl (2013), also vibrates with images of circles, which are portrayed as diverse, repeated, and geometric shapes. Their richly varied colors and plastic balance maintains a strong aesthetic value.

In Kim’s work, the circle is the primary element in her visual vocabulary and is laden with symbolic context. Her paintings ultimately belong to the tradition of Korean culture.  Kim believes that the variation of circles in her work evokes the qi and invokes the cycle of nature in life, death, and self-renewal. As a critical observer, the philosophical context of her circles is further related to the Eastern (Taoist) concept of Yin and Yang, which is symbolic of positive and negative energy in the universe.  Therefore Kim’s circles are not absolutely separated, but are always floating.  Kim’s subject matter can be interpreted as a reconciliation of balance, a harmony between opposites, the Eastern world and Western world, including physical limitations and spiritual abundance.   Kim’s work is borrowed from her Korean heritage and recontextualized on foreign soil. Her carefully articulated aesthetic discipline brings Eastern depth and Western classicism into a gradually new focus.

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