AAK! PSA: Korean Art Show in Santa Monica

Below is the message from Lois Lambert Gallery in Santa Monica, CA.

Dear Korean,

We will be having two exhibits opening on Saturday July 16th at our gallery located at Bergamot Station. The first is a solo show by Sik Chang and the other is a three-person exhibit featuring the work of David Jang, Chaa Youn Woo, and Tae Ho Kang. The Korean Cultural Center is working with us on the show, and we thought this would be an event you and your readers would be interested in.

Sik Chang’s imagery illustrates a transformational journey between worlds, across cultures (Korea, Africa, and North America), and between the physical and spiritual realms. The theme of ‘transposed images’ has been his guiding motif for the last decade. Sik sees his work as a transfiguration of existing shapes: the ‘primitive’ object is carved, cast, or otherwise changed in material while still retaining its original form. The meaning of the object is then changed by its placement in a new context. Chang is interested in eliminating the everyday use of primitive tools and concentrating on the form.

Following a sabbatical in Africa, Chang began a new sculptural series in an intimate scale. He made bronze casts of collected utilitarian objects from the continent: bowls with figurative handles, crescent-shaped headrests, and ladles with large counter-balancing carvings are mixed with small figurines. As he turns the form of a bowl into a water scene, the headrest into a forest, or places a small boat in a silicone-filled glass, the sculptures become three-dimensional collages whose disparate elements relate a new story. His primary materials are bronze and wood with the original colors intact.

Chang has been actively expanding and defining the fields of minimalist and conceptual art in Korea for the last thirty years. The artist cites Duchamp as a major influence, though his work can also be seen as an Asian response to the European appropriation of African Art at the turn of last century.

Chaa Youn Woo began making his woven rattan paintings after living with the Tukano Indians of the Amazon forest for over half a year. Chaa mastered the craft of Baniwa and the common patterns and techniques that thread through a network of over 400 tribes of the Amazon despite their disparate languages and cultures. The artist incorporates the skills he learned with modern portraiture and imagery. Chaa gravitates towards images that can be universally understood, such as candles, ripples, faces, or hands using sign language. He also weaves with llama wool, llauhala, and aluminum. Work by Chaa has been exhibited in museums internationally. Most recently he created a 30 by 40 foot aluminum orchid woven mural for the USC Archway Medical Plaza.

David Jang uses the excess left over from the mass-production of our consumer society as the source of material for his sculptural paintings. Aluminum cans, water bottles, and packaging materials are deconstructed and flattened into spiraling growth patterns that describe both the literal and figurative movement of re-cycling. The use of detritus as a medium is both a formal and philosophical choice for the artist. Jang is an active ingredient in the continuum of the object from its original to its ‘developed’ state: grinders, torches, and power tools are used to manipulate the three-dimensional forms into two dimensions. His pieces have been shown throughout Asia and North America.

Tae Ho Kang’s series of sophisticated abstract paintings are made to affect the deep recesses of the subconscious. The artist blends and juxtaposes hues in order to give the viewer a new experience of color. Using paintbrushes, knives and printing, Kang layers the paint and ink upon itself in order to create a depth of field that belies the flat nature of his canvas. Ancient cave paintings and their natural decay are the inspiration for his porous surface. The organized chaos of his strokes creates a visual experience in which one becomes fully immersed in the interplay between color and texture. Kang has exhibited internationally as well as locally at LACMA and the Newport Art Museum.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.