PLAY
January 16 - February 6, 2001
Gallery Korea at the Korean Cultural Center New York
(460 Park Ave. 6th Floor, New York, NY 10022)
Hin Sun Hong
Jungwon Lee
Maria Spector
Reiko Waguri
Koh Kyoung Wook
There is an idea of free movement associated with play but also of restriction as when, for example, a game is played. The aesthetic pleasure generated by art often surrounds the apprehension of new perspectives toward familiar ideas. This exhibition brings together the work of two painters, two ceramic artists and one photographer who in different ways open their work to the play of fancy and imagination.
Jungwon Lee creates ceramic objects that look as they are made up out of a combination of internal and external bodily organs. In these amalgamations of suggestive physicality there is an evocation of connection and intimacy. The other ceramic artist included here, Koh, Kyoungwook reproduces the elegant designs of various domestic brushes in fine porcelain. In addition, she makes bizarre objects that have a familiar appearance but an implausible function.
A dream-like consciousness is described in the accumulation of images and marks on paper made by Reiko Waguri. Unexpected incidents erupt in surreal juxtapositions that suggest a diary recollecting impressions from the artist? life. Maria Spector features images of children in paintings that reflect both the unsullied optimism of youth and the burgeoning concerns of maturity. These pictures identify the routine tasks of life as occasions for reflection and amusement. Hin Sun Hong photographs a collage of his own head with the face cut out and filled with diverse images and sentence fragments. These superimposed signs suggest the externalization of consciousness that is played upon by various cultural influences.