Multiple Exposure by Yaloo, Kira Nam Greene, Soi Park (2016 AHL Visual Art Awardees)
October 20, 2016 – November 2, 2016
Opening Reception: October 20, 6-8 PM
Location: ART MORA Gallery, 547 West 27th Street, New York, NY 10001
The AHL Foundation is pleased to present Multiple Exposure, a group exhibition of works by AHL’s 2016 Visual Art Awardees. The three award winners Yaloo (Ji Yeon Lim), Kira Nam Greene and Soi Park were selected by Alise Tifentale, Art historian and Co-curator of the Latvia Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale, Sharon Matt-Atkins, Vice Director of Exhibitions and Collections Management at the Brooklyn Museum, and Sara Reisman, Artistic Director at The Shelly & Donald Rubin Foundation.
From digital video to painting to photography, the three artists employ vastly different media and process of working. However, they all share a common theme that touches upon desire, accumulation, and transformation in exploring various cultural nuances. Whether capturing a slice of contemporary life through the lens of media saturated Pop culture or the delicate balancing act of immigrants trying to reconcile who they are at the intersection of contrasting cultural and sociopolitical economies, the works in Multiple Exposure present intriguing accumulation of multifaceted interpretations and perspectives.
Yaloo (Ji Yeon Lim) explores how images of prosperity and desire are marketed, advertised, and commodified in the age of globalization and excess. She creates spectacular visual orgies from digital fragments that are collaged together. In the New Millennium Workout Routine for example, Yaloo films herself performing a series of government designed standardized exercises clad in red thermal long johns, which was the first mass-produced Westernized garment in modern day South Korea and a symbol of wealth and longevity.
Similarly, Kira Nam Greene’s work explores sensuality, desire and consumption through the juxtaposition of lush still life of food with abstract geometric elements and decorative motifs from both Eastern and Western cultures. Greene employs multiple layers of diverse media such as oil, acrylic, gouache, watercolor and colored pencil to create bold colorful surfaces filled with complex web of Pop Art tropes, subversive advertising, feminine sexuality, transcultural patterns and design traditions, as well as disparate cultural and sociopolitical realities.
Soi Park works with large-format photography exploring cultural nuances and human migration. Her most recent seriesYoung Jeong Sajin (The Funeral Portrait) captures the portraits of the elderly within several Korean-American communities. Though the series may look like straightforward portraitures at first glance, they capture a very specific and common cultural practice by the Korean elderly of creating a memorial/funeral portrait of themselves while they are still alive. The simple photograph embodies the sitters’ desires, emotions and accumulation of his/her life stories as they sit in their best dress.
About the Artists
Yaloo (Ji Yeon Lim) received both her Master and Bachelor of Fine Art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a focus on digital image making and video installation. She was the first recipient of the Lyn Blumenthal Memorial Fellowship awarded by SAIC’s Video Data Bank and a HATCH resident artist at Chicago Artist Coalition. Yaloo’s work has been part of a number of solo and group exhibitions and screenings in Chicago, New York, Columbus, Seattle, Vancouver (British Columbia), Malmo (Sweden), Frankfurt (Germany), and Seoul (South Korea).
Born in Seoul, South Korea, Kira Nam Greene received her MFA from School of Visual Arts, BFA from San Francisco Art Institute, Ph.D. in Political Science from Stanford University and BA in International Relations from Seoul National University. Greene has shown her work international at venues such as Accola Griefen Gallery, Jane Lombard Gallery, Kiechel Fine Art, Diego Rivera Gallery, A.I.R. Gallery, Galeria Galou (San Juan, Puerto Rico), Piccolomini Palace (Pienza, Italy), Brown University, Salisbury University, Wave Hill, Bronx Museum of Art, Noyes Museum and Sheldon Museum of Art.
Soi Park earned her B.A in Visual Communication Design from Ewha Womans University then went on to receive her BFA from SUNY Purchase College and completed her MFA in photography from Yale University. Park’s work has been featured in Art Chicago NEXT Art Fair’s New Insight curated by Susanne Ghez, Director The Renaissance Society, Spectra 2010 organized by Silvermine Art Center, CUE Art Foundation, the Pennsylvania College of Art & Design, and the14th Dong Gang International Photo Festival (Gangwon, South Korea). Park was also the recipient of the Alice Kimball English Traveling Fellowship and the Engaging Artist Residency Program at More Art.
This exhibition is funded in part by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
