At the Crossroad
Thursday, October 30 - Saturday, November 29, 2003
Gallery Korea at the Korean Cultural Center New York
(460 Park Ave. 6th Floor, New York, NY 10022)
Gallery Korea is pleased to present "At the Crossroads," a special exhibition to celebrate the 100 years of Korean immigration to the United States. This exhibition showcases twenty prominent Korean-American artists who have lived and worked in and around New York since the 1970s and 1980s.
These Korean-American artists stand at the crossroads, both between Korea and the U.S., and the past and the future. Just as the first Koreans had individual, personal, and social reasons to come to the U.S. to work on sugar plantations in Hawaii, these artists also came to New York for many reasons. Among these reasons was the milieu of considerable artistic freedom and dignity which encouraged them to stay on. Yet, New York is a contested art world in which the intensity of diversity and competition parallels with these artists' uniqueness and originality.
The Korean cultural memory dwells in these Korean-American artists: for example, in Po Kim's utopian, imaginary world; in Nam June Paik's preference for a Buddha statue; in Byungki Kim's image of a wild goose as symbol of yearning for home; and in Yong Jin Han's preference for stone for its sturdiness and stillness. The "Koreanness" returns whenever they face aesthetic or political concerns. While "Koreanness" or "Korean-Americanness" is not a fixed entity, it seems to affect the artists' choice of subject and content in one way or another. As Ms. Wolhee Choe wrote in her essay for the exhibition catalogue, these twenty artists "have challenged the Korean aesthetic traditions, first by leaving Korea and then by making art in new ways."
A catalogue is published for the exhibition. A limited number of free catalogues will be available to guests at the opening reception on Friday, October 31, 2003, 6 - 8 pm. The rest of catalogues will be sent to libraries and museums in the U.S. and Korea.
Gallery Korea is open from 10 am to 7 pm Monday through Friday, and from 10 am to 4 pm on Saturday.
For more information, please contact curator Eunhee Yang by phone at 212-759-9550 or via email at eyang@koreanculture.org