Demonstration by Kintsugi Master, Kunio Nakamura at Waterfall Mansion

KUNIO NAKAMURA

Born in Tokyo in 1971. The owner of Book & Gallery “6th Dimension” in Ogikubo, Tokyo. Kintsugi master. After being in charge of art and travel programs as a director of a TV program production company, he became independent at the age of 37. Established a Kintsugi studio and started activities to protect Japanese traditions. Currently, as a writer, he writes about Western art and antique art, while spreading the concept of Kintsugi throughout the world. His books include "Kintsugi Handbook", "Introduction to Kintsugi BOOK", "Old Art Handbook", and "Introduction to Art History through Charts" etc.

"Kintsugi" as a Landscape

A fracture in a bowl becomes a dramatic landscape painting. When such “gold” enters a a place of devastation, a lightning strikes into the dark, and golden rivers suddenly sweep through the vast terrain. Tree branches touch the sky, creating a brand new landscape. Desiring such drama, there was a time when tea masters intentionally broke a bowl to mend with gold. Chipped vessels can speak of nature herself, a playful, and elegant, gesture toward the beautiful - this is “Kintsugi (金継ぎ)”.

Kintsugi is known as a traditional Japanese repair method in which cracked or chipped ceramics are glued with Japan lacquer, made from a sap of a tree, and then the seam is embellished with gold, silver, vermilion, etc. History tells us that Kintsugi is known to have started around the 15th century by applying lacquerware as a repair method.

There is a famous celadon bowl called “Bakohan (馬蝗絆)”. This is a treasure from China around the 12th century. In the 15th century, the celadon bowl was owned by Shogun, Yoshimasa Ashikaga. There was already a crack in the bowl, so Yoshimasa sent it back to China saying, “I want another bowl that can replace it.” However, the Chinese replied that “we cannot make similar celadon bowls anymore." They instead hammered the cracks with a metal "staples" and sent it back to Japan. The staples on the bowl looked like a grasshopper riding on a back of a horse. This is why the bowl was named “Bakouhan” ("馬" means "horse", "蝗" means "grasshopper" and "絆" means "tether"). However, it is said that this provided the opportunity to use lacquerware techniques to repair ceramics so it will appear even more beautiful, which developed into "Kintsugi".

The Perfect Imperfection

In the philosophy of Kintsugi, beauty is made perfect through imperfection. This originates from a concept called “Wabi, Sabi” central to the Art of Tea. “Wabi” is quietness found in ascetic simplicity. “Sabi” refers to the beauty of a worn object which capture the sense of time. This thought originates from Taoism during the Chinese Qin Dynasty (960-1279 A.D.), which was incorporated into Zen Buddhism.

In the 16th century, tea ceremony was refined by Sen no Rikyu, the great tea master, and became the basis of Japanese aesthetics. Up until that point, expensive Chinese ceramics called Karamono (meaning Chinese products) were popular in a tea ceremony. However Joo Takeno and Sen no Rikyu started to use bowls that were used in daily life of common people in Korea for their tea ceremonies. “Wabi, Sabi” birthed a new aesthetic sense that appreciated the beauty in accidental shapes, deformations, cracks, and chips and appreciating the landscape that appeared through them. The tearoom for drinking tea was very simple and modest. It was a beauty created by eliminating decorative elements. This is similar to a Tiny Home phenomenon, which has a minimalistic aesthetic sense. Le Corbusier, who is also known as the father of modern architecture, significantly also made a “small house” for his parents.

The "imagination" to Mend

What is the essence of “Kintsugi”? I feel it to be completely different from mere repair and restoration. If the idea was to only glue broken pieces together, the Japanese had been repairing pottery using lacquer since the era of hunters and gatherers from 10,000 years ago. However, the tea masters who mastered the way of tea were of a different mindset. They saw through the brokenness an incomprehensible beauty, a landscape in between the cracks, and they started to invoke “mending” through their imagination. In the cracks of old walls or in rusted surface they sought a “majestic landscape”; they tapped into the vast resources of imagination. The tea masters created “gardens” using a mounds of sand, a playful way invoke and “reassociation (mitate)” of the great ocean and the mystery of the universe. They realized, that broken fragments are the new “paint brushes” to create beautiful landscapes.

Novelist Junichiro Tanizaki wrote a fascinating note “In Praise of Shadows”. “The skin of (black) lacquerware is a substance of which multiple layers of ‘shadows’ had accumulated, a color naturally birthed from the darkness surrounding it.” Moreover, he wrote that the reason gold is often extravagantly used in Maki-e lacquer work is “to aim to make impact in the dearth of light”. In other words, Kintsugi may be originally an “act of searching for the light”, which was necessitated from the presence of darkness surrounding us.

Translated by Makoto Fujimura and Keiko Yanaka, excerpt from Kintsugi Book.

What happened when Makoto Fujimura came to lunch?

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Waterfall Mansion & Gallery’s unique ambience provides the perfect setting for intimate conversations about culture, art and faith. Warm hospitality mixed with elegance epitomizes our vision of HOME which has now become a standard tradition. So, with this in mind we launched the Waterfall Salon Lunch Series— and we are delighted to announce that our very first offering did not disappoint!


The buzz around our August exhibition, ‘Sea Beyond’ by Mako Fujimura lured both the art conscious and the art curious through our ornate gates on the Upper East Side straight into a collection the New York Times leading opinionist, David Brooks, dubbed “gorgeous works of abstract expressionism.”

It’s worth mentioning that David Brooks in his long career at the New York Times, has never before felt moved to devote his column inches to an artist. But there was something about Mako’s creative expression that moved him. As art investors and collectors alike begin to snap up his work, it has to be said, Mako is gaining a reputation not only as an artist but as an inspirational culture shaper. As the founder of the International Arts Movement (IAM) Mako is advocating for culture care thinking as a catalyst for change.

When one of our beloved patrons suggested to Kate that we host an intimate lunch salon with Mako to discuss his most recent book, Culture Care, we jumped at the chance to pull out our finest china, chill the champagne and facilitate what was a truly illuminating bespoke experience!

Nik Lashley, an independent art strategist and brand writer, alongside gallery owner Kate Shin, served as our moderator. Nik, wasted no time in welcoming our special guests and urged everyone, as they enjoyed their gourmet multi-course lunch, to join in the conversation and share their ideas.

In setting out his bold vision for culture care, artist Mako Fujimura defined his concept as a salve for a culture in crisis, transfixed by the ideas that divide us rather than those that unite us—he offers up a generative principle he says, that has the power to reach beyond mere survival, to inspire people to meaningful action and dialogue while leading us towards wholeness and harmony.

But it was Mako’s ideas about each of us, as individuals, becoming custodians of culture care in our own lives, personal and professional, that truly nurtured our souls. That afternoon as we all sat beside the cascading waterfall, alongside Mako’s aptly titled piece Walking on Water - Grace and Waves, he lovingly urged us to cultivate a spirit of faith not fear.

Mako’s own faith in God and his belief in the transformative power of creativity was, it must be said, as captivating as his artworks that lined the walls of the ground floor space where we gathered. Known as the three “Gs” Mako introduced us to the ideas of Genesis moments, Generosity and Generational thinking as the building blocks of his culture care movement.

As our time together came to a close it was perhaps Mako’s words about the enduring power of beauty as a response to “our troubled and aching world” that left us all, simply wanting more!

For an exclusive signed copy by Makoto Fujimura of Culture Care: Reconnecting with Beauty for our Common Life for $35 (Including domestic shipping cost in US) you can email us at soyon@waterfallmansion.com

Makoto Fujimura

Makoto Fujimura (b. 1960, Boston) was recently appointed Director of Culture Care Initiative at Brehm Center, Fuller Seminary for Worship Theology and the Arts, and is an artist, writer, and speaker who is recognized worldwide as a cultural influencer. A Presidential appointee to the National Council on the Arts from 2003-2009, Fujimura served as an international advocate for the arts, speaking with decision makers and advising governmental policies on the arts. In 2014, the American Academy of Religion named Fujimura as it’s 2014 “Religion and the Arts” award recipient.

Fujimura’s work is represented by Artrue International and has been exhibited at galleries around the world, including Waterfall Mansion & Gallery and Dillon Gallery in New York City, Sato Museum in Tokyo, The Contemporary Museum of Tokyo, Tokyo National University of Fine Arts Museum, Bentley Gallery in Arizona, Gallery Exit and Oxford House at Taikoo Place in Hong Kong, and Vienna’s Belvedere Museum. He is one of the first artists to paint live on stage at New York City’s legendary Carnegie Hall as part of an ongoing collaboration with composer and percussionist, Susie Ibarra. Waterfall Mansion Gallery in New York City has also featured two exhibits "Silence and Beauty" (2016) and "Silence - Homage" (2017, May through July).

A popular speaker, he has lectured at numerous conferences, universities and museums, including the Aspen Institute, Yale and Princeton Universities, Sato Museum and the Phoenix Art Museum. Fujimura founded the International Arts Movement in 1992, a nonprofit whose “Encounter” conferences have featured cultural catalysts such as Dr. Elaine Scarry, Dennis Donoghue, Billy Collins, Dana Gioia, Calvin DeWitt and Miroslav Volf. Fujimura’s second book, Refractions: A Journey of Faith, Art and Culture, is a collection of essays bringing together people of all backgrounds in a conversation and meditation on culture, art, and humanity. In celebration of the 400th Anniversary of the King James Bible, Crossway Publishing commissioned and published The Four Holy Gospels, featuring Fujimura’s illuminations of the sacred texts.



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Minha Yang

Minha Yang was born in Chung Ju in 1975, studied visual communication design at Seoul National University, and received his MFA in graphic design from same university. From 2006 until 2008 he was professor of design department at Myungji University and taught Interactive-Graphics. Since 2008, Minha Yang has been teaching Interactive-Graphics and Motion-Graphics design at University of Seoul.

Minha Yang has participated in many group exhibitions in Korea and abroad, including: Seoul International Media Art Biennale (2002), MAAP beijing (2002), China Art & Science (2003), Kwangju International Design Biennale (2005), Spain ARCO biennale MINBAK (2007), Czech of Rep. The Prague Contemporary Art Festival Tina-b. City Fables (2007), Centre Des Arts Enghien-Les-Bains France PRINTEMPS PERFUME (2010), Incheon International Digital Art Festival(2009, 2010), The Creators' Project Seoul and NY (2011) · SFO(2012) · SPO(2012), Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Seoul Opening Exhibition(2013), Les Arts Décoratifs France(2015), Brazil FILE Festival(2015), Canada ELEKTRA(2016). He has received prizes like Excellence Award in Asia Digital Art Award (2001~2004) and Canon Award in Canon Digital Creators Contest (2001, 2002) and Young Artist Prize Art division in Korea(2014).

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Nikolai Makarov

SILENCE AND CONTEMPLATION

Nikolai Makarov (b. 1952, Moscow) worked as an artist in his native Russia until moving to East Berlin in 1975. There, he studied history at the Humboldt University followed by several years studying at East Germany’s Academy of Arts, where he was a student of the master class of Werner Klemke (Berlin) and Rudolf Hausner (Vienna). In 1988, Makarov was admitted as Member of Artists House, Austrian Society of Fine Arts.

Currently based in Berlin, Makarov concentrates entirely on his work. While he initially preferred oil paints over acrylics, he decided to base his works on the latter following encouragement from the Austrian painter Rudolf Hauser. Diluted with water, these enabled him to build up layers of subtle washes that converge into a smooth surface of paint, making his paintings moving and unmistakable. He is primarily an innovative figurative painter and a skilled connoisseur of the art of Europe’s Old Masters. Nonetheless, he has increasingly become able to transform the visual concepts of his paintings of figures, profoundly experienced landscapes and architecture — all based on real situations or fleeting impressions — into something transcendental. He achieves this by embedding his motifs within a diffuse tonality (founded primarily on a variety of seemingly transparent tones of red, blue and dark brown) and by illuminating only a few prominent passages of the images. In this way, he reduces his motifs to the outward appearance of their existence. This process deliberately hinders any direct and clear view of the painting’s motif; however, it also stimulates a gaze that concerns itself with details as well as viewers’ entrance into a world subjectively interpreted by Makarov.

As Makarov had already garnered attention for works he made while still a student, later exhibitions at museums and galleries made his original body of work internationally known. He is currently director of the art association StilLeben e.V. in Berlin, and President of the Sergej Mawrizki Foundation as of 2000. He is also the founder of the Museum of Silence, located at the edge of the bustling heart of Berlin. There, he places his own works in relation to interior architectures designed by important architects, in which the goal of presenting his works as realms of silence provides the theme and makes it seem as if time really does come to a stop.

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TAO: Lee Seung Hee

CERAMIC BAMBOO

Seunghee Lee understands the traditional history of bamboo and its symbolism. In Asaian culture bamboo is the hallmark of beauty and character. Highlighting such virtues like integrity, modesty, loyalty and honor. Even the nature of its flexibility and vast root system, all depicting things like prosperity, resilience and strength. Seunghee chose to remake bamboo out of the most fragile and inflexible of materials: clay.

Wanting to create a paradox between the two identities: the flexibility of the natural bamboo vs the inflexibility of man-made pottery. Intrigued by this fascinating tension of the two opposite substances, it drove him to create: the flexible and the inflexible, natural and man made, soft and hard, flexible and rigid.

These are the properties of a natural bamboo forest vs a clay bamboo forest But they are also properties of us all. Seughee Lee takes us on a walk into a forest that we are all part of.


CERAMIC TILES

Seung Hee has an unusual approach to ceramics. He  recreates famous examples of Joseon dynasty (1392-1910) porcelain onto ceramic tiles. In a genius format he is able to duplicate these images of fine porcelain onto ceramic tiles, while replicating and retaining their original beauty. In Korean, porcelain is known as baekja, or white ware. The process of duplication is very in-depth and time consuming in order to retain the original beauty and charm of these historic porcelain pieces.


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BUILDING SEOUL: Han Youngsoo

 

Han Youngsoo was little known outside of Korea during his lifetime. Seen from today’s vantage point, his photographs come as a surprise. With their impeccable composition, flawless timing, and scrupulous attention to social detail, they suggest the work of a long-lost Korean cousin of such early Magnum photographers as Henri Cartier-Bresson, David Seymour (Chim), and Marc Riboud. After taking part in bitter frontline fighting as a young South Korean soldier during the Korean War (1950–53), Han returned to Seoul at the war’s end and found a devastated city. Choosing photography as a profession, he witnessed a period of profound transformation in Seoul that saw the rapid creation of a modern city and urban society. His photographs tell this story by offering a fascinating window onto the everyday lives of the city’s ordinary men, women, and children. Although he did not overlook the surviving customs and architecture of old Seoul—there are remarkable views of terraced hills crowded with traditional tile-roofed dwellings—Han was more interested in exploring the modern urban culture that was rapidly taking shape. His street portraits are filled with recognizable metropolitan types: an anxious young couple tending their sidewalk used-book stall; a self-satisfied young woman strolling in a sleek fur coat on what appears a warm fall day. Han paid special attention to the changing status of Korean women, who were then finding new roles as entrepreneurs or consumers, as suggested in views of narrow streets lined with well-stocked fashion boutiques. Although after 1966 Han turned his attention to running a successful studio specializing in advertising and fashion photography, his photographs of Seoul in the postwar decade remain one of the richest and most humanly sympathetic visual records of those years. Today, with the partnership of the Waterfall Mansion & Gallery, the Han Youngsoo foundation has successfully reintroduced his work by organizing his induction into the ICP (International Center of Photography), making Han Youngsoo the first Korean photographer to enter their private collection.

Proceeds from print sales go to the Han Youngsoo Foundation


About Han Youngsoo

Born to a well-to-do family in Gaesung, Korea, in 1933, Han Youngsoo took drawing and painting lessons as a young man and pursued photography as a hobby. Following service in the Korean military during the Korean war, he started his photographic career as a member of Shinsunwhue (New Line Group), an association of socially concerned realist photographers. With the advent of economic prosperity in 1960s Korea, he established Han’s Photo Studio in 1966; it became a celebrated pioneer of Korean advertising photography and fashion photography. Han played an active role in a number of Korean photography associations and cultural organizations. In 1987 he published a wide selection of his historic photographs of postwar Seoul in a large-format book, Korean Lives after the War, 19561960. Following his death in 1999, his daughter Han Sunjung established the Han Youngsoo Foundation to preserve his negatives and archive and to promote recognition of his accomplishments. Han Youngsoo’s works have received growing international attention in recent years, and were featured at the Rencontres d’Arles photo festival in 2014. Two volumes of his photographs have been published by Hansgraphic: Seoul: Modern Times (2014) and Once Upon a Time (2015). 


 
 

Han Youngsoo's photo books: Seoul, Modern Times and Once Upon a Time are available on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/Seoul-Modern-Times-Han-Youngsoo/dp/8996898945/ref=sr_1_1?s=apparel&ie=UTF8&qid=1519489900&sr=8-1&keywords=han+youngsoo

COLOR AND SHAPES: Geri Taper

Geri Taper (1929–2004) moved to New York City in 1976 from Pittsburgh where she had established herself as a leading artist, her career culminating in a show of large-scale works at the inaugural exhibition of the Sarah Scaife Gallery at the Carnegie Museum of Art. Drawn to the vitality and promise of an emergent Soho, Taper vigorously pursued a career that included individual and group exhibitions at the city’s foremost galleries (David McKee, A.M. Sachs, Theodore Haber), foundation grants for special projects (New York Foundation for the Arts), commissions for the interior and exterior renovation of commercial and industrial properties in Long Island City (Falchi, Redstone Rocket and Center Buildings), and the design of a multi- colored banner at Queensboro Plaza Station sponsored by the New York City Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA).

For more than 25 years, Taper's paintings have been involved with forms through color. The lyrical energy of form flows from one painting to the next with bold colors and forms changing shape from one to the next. 

"The images are the music" 

"We don't see with out eyes, but with our vision"

-Geri Taper

 

FILLING THE PLANE: Richard Hassell

Richard Hassell is an Australian-born architect and artist who has lived in Singapore since 1989. He founded the architectural practice WOHA with Wong Mun Summ in 1989. WOHA has exhibited their work in the Venice Biennale, most recently with a video installation entitled “Fragments of an Urban Future” and in New York at the Skyscraper Museum with “Garden City| Mega City” both in 2016. WOHA have received 7 President’s Design Awards, Singapore’s highest design accolade.

Richard’s art practice intersects with the architectural practice, and explores complex geometries and tiling. Growing up with his brother, mathematician Professor Andrew Hassell of the Analysis and Geometry Program at the National University of Australia, recreational mathematics including the art of M.C. Escher was an early source of delight and wonder. Since 2004 Richard has extended M.C.Escher’s work on tessellations and symmetry into new geometries discovered after Escher’s death. These complex geometries have also been incorporated into the designs of WOHA’s buildings, such as the aperiodic facades in the Sanya Intercontinental Hotel on Hainan Island and the cladding on the Chengdu Tianfu complex in China.

Recently WOHA exhibited a pavilion with a fractal plane-filling façade in Paris and Singapore, with a cladding system titled the Beanstalk.

His book, “Strange Creatures” is a series of prints, artworks and wall panels, and includes tessellations based on fractals, aperiodic tiling and plane-filling curves. The designs reference not only Escher and recent science, but also traditional art of the region, including South East Asian textiles and tribal art.

Learn more at: https://richardhassell.net/

 
 

A HAPPY DONUT MAN: Jae Yong Kim

"I started to create donut works in 2008, when I was in depression. During that time, I asked myself what makes me happy, and redefined the happiness in my life. I thought that fame, money, and power creates happiness success. I create a circular mold, then create a donut with fluid clay. I dry the clay donut and put it into the bisque fire. I apply underglaze to create each unique design. After painting, I put into bisque fire once more. The second bisque fire will clear out all the debris and look stronger. Then I glaze the donut and put into glaze fire. Sometimes I do multi-firing in order to make the perfect donut. Also I put decorative crystals for some of the pieces. During the time when I created the series of donuts, I made a connection to the choir singing in harmony at Brooklyn Tabernacle Church. Looking at the beautiful choir singing together, I wanted to create donuts with colorful clothes. I wish that people can see each one’s unique beauty within the diverse world."

-Jae Yong Kim 

VISUALIZING SOUND: Gil Kuno

"I am fascinated by chaos, noise, and entropy – a force of nature that we find difficult to control. Without control, the artist becomes a channel for a higher power (that articulates through him/her.) I find this collaborative effort invigorating and believe that the output is always on a much higher plane than when articulating alone.

I try to redirect the flow of the mind outside of the set patterns we are taught by society to construct. Through my work; I try to displace natural activity from its context, revealing an otherwise hidden level of metaphorical absurdity within the ordinary patterns present before our eyes. The goal of sublimating everyday perception underlies many of my projects. I aim to push people away from paradigmatic thinking through various themes and methodologies – aleatoric systems (chance operations,) exaggerated perception, derailed reality and re-envisioning experiences common within everyday life."


-Gil Kuno

SILK AND IRON: Orna Ben-Ami

Israeli-born artist Orna Ben-Ami uses the medium of iron to juxtapose hard and soft, rigid and fluid, heavy and ethereal, permanence and transience, and stillness and movement. A delicate silk dress, a folded mattress, an embroidery hoop, wrinkled paper, and old photographs all tell new stories when translated into welded iron. Her unique take on the relationship between material and concept creates an unexpected yet sophisticated dialogue between the dualities she brings together, utilizing one end of a spectrum while evoking the other.

 

Visit her website for more: http://www.ornabenami.com/home.html

 

THE SEARCH FOR ETERNAL TRUTH: Jinwon Chang

Artist Jinwon Chang focuses on life and God in his pieces as he searches for meaning in ultimate truth. The concept of his work is that it is not his own, but pieces of the truth that is translated through his being. In this way, he acts as a vessel, a piece himself rather than a creator. Through many familiar motifs and symbols that tell the stories of his personal struggles and triumphs on his journey of faith, he visualizes what even he does not know. For Jinwon Chang, art is just as much, if not more, a matter of listening and suppressing as it is a matter of speaking and self-expression.

 

BUTTERFLIES IN BLUE: Hiroko Otake

"The main themes of my paintings are butterflies and flowers. They are coupled together into never ending instants, veiled in uncertainty, where every minute of existence is constantly renewed. I can feel sincerity and candor while observing the nature and the butterflies. Butterfly here means 'Psyche' (from the Greek 'ψυχή') was 'life' in the sense of 'breath', 'spirit', 'soul'. And ultimately 'ego' in the sense of 'conscious personality') I thus paint butterflies in my works representing these symbols: soul, mind, 'Numen'(the power of God) , but also beauty, shimmer, and spiritual renaissance. I started painting butterflies as I felt that similar to them I was able to modify and renew shape, with the unrestricted chances deriving from the ephemeral and transient nature of the change. While painting butterflies and focusing my mind on the literature concerning such theme I have discovered their many symbolic meanings. Through my work I want to express my impressions and feelings combined with the symbolism of butterflies."

-Hiroko Otake

 

CAPTURING LIGHT: Soo Sunny Park

 Korean-American artist Soo Sunny Park explores the harmony between organic and synthetic worlds. Employing the dualities of motion and stillness, transparency and opacity, reflection and refraction, nature and art, an invisible and intimate da…

 

Korean-American artist Soo Sunny Park explores the harmony between organic and synthetic worlds. Employing the dualities of motion and stillness, transparency and opacity, reflection and refraction, nature and art, an invisible and intimate dance is exposed and materialized in her installation pieces. Paying acute attention to the unique qualities of her materials and the way they behave in relation to space and time, she composes a visual symphony of light and motion. Her works place the epic motions of nature and the secret movements within ourselves in a single space.

For more, visit her website: http://soosunnypark.com/

 

ART FOR THE MIND AND SOUL: Makoto Fujimura

Makoto Fujimura creates work that concerns itself first and foremost with the heart and intellect. Both an advocate and a creator of the arts, a writer, and a vocal speaker on matters of culture and faith, he explores the educational and communicative properties of art. Fujimura uses color and composition to open discussions on the events of the world and his academic journeys.

Conversations with Makoto Fujimura and Academy-Award winning director, Martin Scorsese: https://fullerstudio.fuller.edu/conversation-martin-scorsese/

For more of Makoto Fujimura's writings and artworks, visit: http://www.makotofujimura.com/

TRANSDIMENSIONAL FORMS: Osang Gwon

Photography and flat images tend to lend themselves to a graphic nature while sculpture and installation often try to assume a spatial-physical impact. Photography and graphic images can also be considered to be the frontier of the modern art aesthetic while sculpture stands as a pillar of the classical mode of art. Osang Gwon attempts to capitalize on the unique features of both arenas with his 'photo-sculptures' which marry the flat and the 3-dimensional, the modern and the classical, and the familiar with fantasy. By implementing the flat textures and values of an image to complement the surface of a 3-dimensional form, the two traditionally segregated worlds begin to both exaggerate and harmonize with one another. The authority of the physical object compensates for the lack of depth and tangible presence in the photographic images, while in turn the graphic and planar language of the flat image offers animation, information, and the introduction of a new visual dimension. In so many ways, Gwon is illustrating the way the modern individual experiences life in a world in which so many different forces collide, conflict, integrate, and manipulate one another to yield something spectacular and strange.

For more, visit: http://osang.net/

FLUID WOOD: Cha Jong Rye

Cha Jong Rye brings breath to still wood as she brings forth a seemingly inherent movement from its surface texture. Through her process, she finds a meditative rhythm which evokes what appear to be the ripples of the spirit of the raw material. In an effort to find the true energy of her self as well as her medium, she dissects and illustrates the forces that exist beyond passive experience and tangible observation.

For more, visit her website: http://jongrye.com/

STILL WOMEN: Carole A. Feuerman

Recognized since the 1970's as one of the most distinguished hyperrealist sculptors in the world, Carole A. Feuerman presents playful yet stoic statements about feminine power and the pursuit of aspirations. Frozen in time, Feuerman's women serve as icons. They are representatives of both the artist herself as a woman and the feminine spirit within the viewer. As a female artist, she speaks about the struggles that accompany being a woman in the art world as well as being a woman in life. With water droplets forever suspended in their tracks on the skin, soft eyelashes that sit still in the facade of contemplation, these resin women embody in our own likeness both the courage and fear that fuel and hinder us.

For more, visit her website: http://www.carolefeuerman.com/

MAGIC AND MACHINES: Ujoo & Limhee Young

Ujoo and Limhee Young, a husband-and-wife duo, are fascinated with dressing the ethereal plane of fantasy in the physical forms of machines and images. With pieces ranging from kinetic Fantasy Stimulating Engines to Secret Keeping Machines, the pair breathes striking life into familiar dreams and feelings. Where cold metal meets the warm nostalgia of fictional stories, strange and wonderful creatures are spawned. 

For more, visit their blog: http://u-joolimheeyoung.blogspot.com/