2023 AHL Art Fair

AHL Foundation Announces 2023 AHL Art Fair

• • Exhibition Period: December 7 (Thu), 2023 – December 16 (Sat), 2023
  • Gallery Hours: Wed-Sat 12PM – 6PM
  • Location: AHL Foundation (2605 Frederick Douglass Blvd. New York NY 10030) 
  • Curated by: Jiyoung Lee, Program Director of AHL Foundation
  • Participating Artists: See attached list

• • Opening Reception: December 7 (Thu), 2023 6-8PM

“Since its inception in 2003, the AHL Foundation has been dedicated to fostering the growth of the Korean art community and nurturing patronage of Korean art within the United States. Through a diverse array of initiatives such as exhibitions, forums, public lectures, as well as grants and fellowships for artists and researchers, we have actively cultivated a vibrant cultural landscape. In 2022, we proudly inaugurated a gallery, archive room, and educational space in West Harlem, New York, designed to serve as a hub for Korean artists and their supporters.

This year, we are delighted to announce the return of our AHL Art Fair, showcasing the remarkable talents of 35 artists working across various mediums including paintings, sculptures, multimedia, drawings, and prints. The selection process for this 2nd AHL Art Fair involved a rigorous OpenCall procedure to ensure the inclusion of exceptional artists.

Timed to coincide with the holiday season, we envision this event as an opportunity for attendees to discover meaningful artworks that can serve as cherished gifts for their loved ones. Our aim is to kindle the joy of collecting and experiencing art firsthand.

Looking ahead, the AHL Foundation remains committed to fostering an inclusive and supportive environment for artists and the wider community. We will continue to create spaces that encourage artistic expression and engagement. ” – Jiyoung Lee Director of Programs, AHL Foundation Curator of the Exhibition

Participating Artists:

Young Eae Ahn, Soeun Bae, Jimin Baek, Airco Caravan, Kai Cho, Fred Fleisher, Ambrus Gero, Phoelix (Yiwen), Mija Jung, Kosuke Kawahara, Seoyoung Kim, Soonah Kim, Suena Kim, Jinyoung Koh, JIhoe Koo, Eunkyung Lee, kyunglim lee, Seungjin Lee, Leo Je-Eon Lee, Jessica Lee, Jiyoun Lee-Lodge, Brian Leo, Youngheui Lee Lim, Tricia McLaughlin, Watson Mere, Jean Oh, Luis Pagan, Saehyun Paik, Chunbum Park, Min Sun Park, In Young Park, Mickey Parkhill, Jiwon Rhie, Hyunjoo Yang, Yeon Ji Yoo

Artist Statment / Bio

Young Eae Ahn

Soeun Bae

I use sculpture, technology and performance to question what it is to be living inside of a body. I explore the dissection, mechanization, and objectification of the body to birth a new hybrid body that holds potential for optimization as it becomes altered, tested, and used. Combining implied parts of the human body and elements drawn from the natural environment, I make a series of performative objects whose body implicates viscera and primordial imprints. I draw from natural systems that are necessary for sustenance and regeneration: self-amputation, parasitic relationships, and dependency for circulation. The systems get translated into objects that present a reductive and depersonalized way of relating to our bodies- bodies in need of regeneration and transformation in a world of consumption and utilization. The machinic body of the sculptures lives on its own, becoming autonomous in the mechanized movement. The objects’ plastic flesh needs human assistance for survival; I provide care for the supposedly living machines. These objects operate within pseudo-systems for performative gestures, assisted by instructions and mechanics. My work becomes a starting point for a series of movements that reconfigures a body outside of itself within a network of exchange between fluids, vitalities, and functions.

Jimin Baek

Jimin Baek is a Seoul-born, Korean visual artist whose paintings focus on language and conversations. Idling Conversations, her current series, consists of her attempts in liberating art from its fate as a communicative medium in the form of installations of paintings. Through dismantling the already established painting languages, her work rejects presumed clarity – focusing rather on the testimonial activation of conversations – which is often the logic of determining the success of conversations today.
Jimin Baek graduated from Hongik University in 2020 majoring in painting and had recently completed her MFA program at Pratt Institute. After graduating, she received an artist grant from MyMa. She is an artist in residence at COPE NYC and is volunteering as a project manager at KANA (Korean Artist in Newyork Association).

Artist Statement:
Idling Conversations: Idling Conversations is a series of my attempts in liberating art from its fate as a communicative medium through a painting practice. Art, admittedly, panders to the penchant of a capitalist society, which demands professionalism and efficiency. Subsumed under the social context and its expectations for art; to effectively deliver rich information, it is constantly exposed to the dangers of becoming mere replications of existing propaganda. To create a collective nothing, leaving just the vacant, yet testimonial activations of paintings, is the only autonomous act I can dare to achieve. Idling Conversations encounters inevitable failures throughout its chronicled endeavors to dismantle the already established visual languages in paintings. However, a newly found constraint always births the next endeavor. Idling Conversations is the pitiful fruit of our constraints. It is only the constraint that facilitates the ever-failing, yet ever-shifting, Idling Conversations.

Airco Caravan

My move from Amsterdam to New York in 2022, a long-time dream, wasn’t just fun. The first thing I had to buy was a spray can of Raid, to get rid of the roaches. Unpleasant, but very effective.
It brought me to the idea of a new body of work. As an activist and feminist conceptual artist, I want to create art contributing to a better world. And wouldn’t it be convenient if we could spray away all nasty things in our society? Just like killing bugs? So I created a growing series of over 140 products for a better world. Bold, humorous, and colorful.
I digitally design the spray cans and bottles and execute them in various mediums: pasted posters and stickers, paintings, wallpaper, laser-cut plexiglass with gemstones, labeled spray cans, solid cast resin spray bottles, animated 3D rendering, vanes, and wall tapestries. Some people thought my message was too radical, so I softened it a little bit: I created PetPeeves.
I will continue creating disruptive and unexpected art to make people think. Because I believe that art can make a difference.
Pet AC, For A Better World.

Kai Cho

Kai Cho was born in Augusta, GA and now resides in Philadelphia, PA. They earned their AFA at Gaston Community College and their BFA in Studio Art from Appalachian State University in Boone, NC. As a second-generation American whose family suffered from assimilation, much of Kai’s work examines the ongoing process of attempting to understand his identity as a mixed Asian queer and trans person. Current themes Kai has been exploring in their work are their chosen name, with meanings ranging from “shell” or “shellfish” in Japanese to “the sea” in Hawaiian, and protective motifs from his cultural heritages.

Fred Fleisher

Bio: Fred Fleisher is originally from Pennsylvania and has lived in the New York metropolitan area for over twenty five years. After an enlistment in the Army, he earned a BFA in Painting & Drawing and a BS in Art Education from Penn State University and an MFA from Queens College, CUNY. His work has been represented by galleries, both nationally and internationally and he has had recent solo exhibitions in Brooklyn, New York City, Hudson, NY, Berlin, Germany and Chicago. He has been included in a number of two and three person exhibitions and numerous group exhibitions while working with curators in the art world. Recently, his work was included in SPRING/BREAK Art Show LA and NY, Spring Forward Exhibition with Arcade Project Curatorial and Rediscoveries at NARS Foundation. Critical review of his work has appeared in numerous publications and his work is in a number of collections. He is an Assistant Professor at SUNY, College at Old Westbury and has organized several curatorial projects with the latest, “Imagined Futures” at the Amelie A. Wallace Gallery of SUNY, College at Old Westbury. This exhibition continued with a second part on Governor’s Island at Swale House in May 2022.

Artist Statement:
I work with a range of materials, concentrating on painting, sculpture, and installations. The use of found artifacts and visual ephemera are often common components within my work. I combine concepts that seem to be incompatible, tying together the cultural strands of a jumbled tapestry where immersion is unavoidable both now and in the past. Combine preachers and theology with professional wrestling; Walt Whitman and stuffed animals; Weapons of War with Self-Help and Americana. While being grounded in two- and three-dimensional platforms, my work is eclectic. That is by design as I remain open to any and all media that are necessary to achieve my result. Thus, my practice is interdisciplinary and this cross-media methodology finds its way into my paintings, sculptures, installations, drawings, photographs, videos and performances.

Ambrus Gero

Ambrus Gero is a Hungarian visual artist who currently lives in Brooklyn, New York. He creates kinetic sculptures, installations and oil paintings that express his concept of unity and human alienation. He majored in painting at University of Pecs, in Hungary. After completing his first MFA, Gero went on to participate in group exhibitions in the United States, Hungary, Slovenia, Denmark, and Germany. He earned his second MFA, majoring in painting again from Pratt Institute (2020). His solo exhibition Masks in Rave was in collaboration with The Garment District Space For Public Arts, NY (2022), and his next solo show will be hosted by The Front Gallery, NY (2023). Recent group exhibitions have been in cooperation with ChaShaMa at ChaShaMa Gala 2023, Wassaic Project, NY (2022-2023), Paradice Palase, Brooklyn (2022), Pratt Manhattan Gallery (2022), Super Dutchess Gallery – now Below Grand – (2020), Fashion Institute of Technology New York (2019), Carlsberg City Gallery & Art Salon Exhibition during Copenhagen Photo Festival, Copenhagen (2019), and Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe, Germany (2010). He is attending Wassaic Project’s Summer Residency this summer (2023). Gero attended The Other Art Fair Brooklyn (2022) and Future Fair, NY (2023). Gero won the international People’s Choice Award from Jackson’s Open Painting Prize in 2018. Gero has been a recipient of awards including The Most Positive Artist Award at Wam Design Gallery, Budapest (2008). Conceptual Garden, his first national architectural design won first prize at the Vaci Green Competition (2011). He received special funding for his public art project named Art Blankets for Picnic (2019). He was awarded the Pratt in Venice Scholarship, The Carlow Memorial Scholarship, The Virginia Pratt Thaye Scholarship in 2019 and Barrett Endowed Scholarship in 2020. His works were acquired by public and private art collections such as Erste Foundation (2010) and Data Foundation (2014). He has been featured in a catalog Field: Site-in-Process, a collaborative studio, exhibition, and research within Expanded Field practices, NY (2019), and in an interview Jackson’s Open Painting Prize, ‘Ambrus ‘Brush’ Gero: Between Reality and Fantasy’ interview by Daniel Brady (2019).

I am a multi-media artist making kinetic sculptures, oil paintings and digitally produced rugs. The possibility of a free community of all people and a sarcastic image of the new world are key elements of my work. Driven by my imagination, my work discusses social alienation and new social norms. My rugs function as both a space to socialize and as a vehicle to create narratives where fantasies unfold. In the center of my work there are social commentaries on the pitfalls of capitalism and the strength of human beings; the possibility to bond together as one.
I create immersive spaces that can inspire communities and create fictional narratives to discuss new social norms. I fabricate carpets and tables using decor and party supplies. I aim to make total art where kinetic sculptures are placed at the center while vision, sound, movement, and interaction of the participants create a multi-sensory ambience. Tapping into the community and comfort of cooking, drinking, and eating a meal together, I offer events to the viewers and participants where special menus are provided on the surface of my kinetic sculptures.

Statement for paintings: My paintings start with researched images on the Internet and taking photographs. I dislocate those photographic elements from their temporal and original contexts, giving them emphasis by placing them within a painterly landscape. After a digital sketch, I create oil paintings focusing on contrast, saturated colors, composition, and visual dynamics. The ambiguity of the images come from the anonymity of the objects and the characters, blurred animalistic identities, and the intimate relationships conjured once the primer motifs and the backgrounds are combined. The digitally manipulated environments of the contemporarily relevant objects and my superheroes navigate the viewer to an imagined narrative.

Phoelix (Yiwen)

Phoelix (Yiwen) is a multidisciplinary artist based in New York City. Her artistic expressions span audiovisual installations, videos, photography, sculpture, and immersive soundscapes, among others. Her work deals with pressing social issues, such as the intricate interplay between perception and reality, and the significance of mental health, including misconceptions and the stigma surrounding mental health issues. She also explores the social construct of what is accepted as normal and abnormal. All the former issues profoundly impact our perceptions, psychological states, and behaviors, leading to real-life consequences such as assumptions, conflicts, prejudice, division, hatred, apathy, and even death.

Through research-based practices, Phoelix creates psychological worlds and merges captured realities with perceptions. Audiovisual metaphors appear frequently, sometimes mixed with related interviews and music. Parallels are drawn between humans’ pursuit of hope and heliotropism: certain flowers’ chase of the moving sun. Fake flowers symbolize the masks of struggling individuals pretending to be doing great, while coats of monochromatic paint represent conformity or masking. Symbols of order, like paper clips, transform into chaotic forms. The new emerges from the brokenness or decay. Together with reflective materials, translucent layers, and projections, Phoelix explores the relationship between perception and reality.

Phoelix’s art seeks to raise awareness, spark meaningful conversations, and encourage greater understanding, empathy, and unity among people. She emphasizes pain and struggles as part of our human condition, or, for 1 in every 8 people worldwide, as part of life with a mental disorder (WHO, 2019).

Phoelix earned an MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York (2022). She has shown her work in the United States and China, including exhibitions at :iidrr Gallery (2023), SVA Galleries (2021, 2022), ZAZ10TS (2021), and SCAD (2015), among others.

Mija Jung

Mija Jung is an interdisciplinary painter based in New York. Their color abstractions through the constructed spaces empower gender fluid equality. Mija achieved an MFA and BFA in painting, Hongik University also an MFA from Rutgers University. Mija won the Visual Art Award from AHL Foundation, CityCorpsGrant, NY, the EllisElizabethAward, NJ and the MBCGrandArtAward, Seoul and TaktResidency, Berlin. They exhibited at C24, AHL, Yards, the New York Arts Center, RobertMiller Gallery and SocratesSculpturePark, NY; Hyundai and Kwanhoon Gallery, Seoul; KleineHumboldtGalerie, Galerie Nord and AtelierhofKreuzberg, Berlin to name a few.

Artist statement: I empower through pleasure and irony the colorful nature of inside body phenomena as positive images. To deal with personal issues of pain, and the awareness of being an Asian woman, the abstraction, mostly disoriented state of the brain in consciousness of architecture, I make my paintings disappear as if I erase my burden, body dysfunctions, and emotions.
The hazy circle form is an unfocused state. With improvised brushstrokes of synopsis and nerve endings, I make large hanging paintings covered with internal organs, and velvet-red varicose veins. The paintings cover walls from the ceiling to the floor, or they are placed in a grid or stacked on the floor. Sometimes they are displayed on top of an assumed suffocated head and body. The thin lines are like wrinkles or fingerprints. I often reference body parts to natural phenomena like distressed and polluted fog and clouds. I use spray, marker, acrylic, and oil paints with thin minimal layers. I paint in various sizes like tiles on the floor and murals on the walls. I tackle my obsessive compulsion by giving order to the work at the end. The way I put together and display my work also creates confusion regarding where the painting and the architectural space meet.
I magnify the pain of the body parts on a large scale or with abundance. The way the internal body parts come together like the architecture of the body, as a whole through various displays invites others to be healed into their inner strength.

Kosuke Kawahara

Kosuke Kawahara (b. 1980) was born in Kyoto, Japan, and moved to New York in 2011. Kawahara currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. His intuitive/impromptu gesture generates site-relevant imagery through its multi-layered structure. Kawahara’s works speak to notions of growth, decay, modes of communication and perception, spiritualism, interdependent relationships, and human behavior in ever-shifting environmental conditions. The whole process of creating a work from the start to its end is a process of the artist constantly exploring and (re)constructing the alternative space around darkness. Kawahara earned his BFA in Design from Okayama Prefectural University, and graduated with an MFA in Painting and Drawing from Pratt Institute in 2020. He has previously exhibited at Smack Mellon, RAINRAIN, The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, Brian Leo Projects, Trestle Gallery, Paradise Palace, Susan Eley Fine Art, Super Dutchess Gallery. He has been awarded the Café Royal Cultural Foundation Visual Grant (2022), City Artist Corps Grants (2021), and First Prize in Works on Paper at The Long Beach Island Foundation of the Arts & Sciences (2021). He completed an artist residency at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Governors Island Residency Initiative, and is currently a member artist at the EFA Studio Program.

Artist Statement: My latest art project “Into Ultrablack” began in 2012 in New York City. I was inspired by the word UV (ultraviolet) and coined the term “ultrablack,” which signifies an imaginative crevice of absolute darkness as if we cannot perceive ultraviolet radiation. Immersing myself in the mystery of the unseen, I explore the enigmatic presence of deformed organisms and their environments. While deformity is often stigmatized as abomination or weakness in societal contexts, I draw inspiration from disfigured body parts, deep-sea creatures and certain bacteria, where deformity can be seen as a futuristic transformation in new environments or as warning against contemporary human activities. The visual elements in my work are derived from my surroundings, including the scenery of my daily commute, my studio environment, and familiar landmarks. The ravine-like view near my current studio in midtown Manhattan, along with the presence of public drug abuse as a social issue, overwraps with dark and chaotic atmosphere of my work. I also bring a sense of mystery and draw from Buddhism/Animism through their common narratives. By fusing these fragments, I aim to develop diverse and intricate imagery in my works. Improvisation plays a vital role in my artistic process. Impromptu gestures accumulate to form deep textures and compounded images. Multiple layers overlap involuntarily, leading to unforeseen outcomes. My art is painterly, while also embracing the specificity of drawing and time-based sequencing. In relation, I have come to embrace the understanding of coexistence with nature and the acceptance of impermanence, imperfection, and insufficiency. This perspective influences my work as I address the wild factors of material aging and incorporate them into my artistic expression.

Seoyoung Kim

The placement and experience of art in different sites have a significant impact on how artworks are viewed. The relationship between space, art, and viewership is a constant power struggle in defining the meaning of home. Space is versatile and can be filled with various elements to create a cohesive experience. Things, which defy traditional categorizations such as paintings, images, sculptures, or objects, exist without clear boundaries and have no fixed beginning or end. They manipulate and transform space, engaging in conversations with site and viewer. The making and display of things question traditional ways of viewing and engaging with art forms in specific sites. Artistic expression has the power to shape and liberate structural spaces. The language of things, represented by their anonymity and monochromatic dark color choice, conceals their true nature and invites a sense of mystery. The building of things undermines the idea of painting through the use of configured linguistics and surfaces that hide their materiality. Things occupy space with flexibility and authority, creating tension and inviting viewer engagement. Reacting to the room and engaging with things on display is a personal decision for each viewer. There is no prescribed guide on how to experience things, as the dynamics and contrast they create depend on viewer’s perception and the context of time and space. The interplay between things, site, and viewer expands through the phases of viewing, fostering an interdependent relationship.

Soonah Kim

Soonah Kim holds a diverse educational background, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from Hongik University in 1993, followed by a Master of Fine Arts in Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1998. Her artistic journey extended to the School of Visual Arts in New York City, where she obtained a second Master of Fine Arts in 2002, this time specializing in Computer Art. Her diverse educational background showcases her dedication to embracing diverse mediums and pushing the boundaries of artistic expression.

Artist Statement:
My artwork is a mirror reflecting the depths of my inner being. Each canvas becomes a dialogue, a silent conversation where I communicate through colors and forms. I listen to its whispers and respond, layering emotions, memories, and experiences until I feel it embodies enough of my essence.

Suena Kim

I was born and raised in Korea and received B.F.A. and M.F.A. at Silla University in Busan. I had 23 solo exhibitions in Korea, The Philippines, New York, New Jersey, London and Germany and had 70 times art fairs and group exhibitions. Currently, I live and work in New York. In the beginning, all matter was derived from only one thing. Likewise, people here originally stemmed from just one being and there was no distinction between races and nations. If we think from this perspective about the beginning, we are all one. After all, we become one: I become you and you become me. As my works are a self-portrait of us all, a figure in my painting is both you and others we do not know. The self-portraits I portray depict all of our faces loaded with emotion. These are your looks reflected in a mirror. I would like to see the world from a different perspective. In my mind, the whole is one in the world. This becomes more apparent when approaching the nature of things. My imagination is constantly unfurling like a panorama. It brims with a rich variety of colors. I find it hard to concentrate consistently on work due to whimsical ideas occurring every moment. It is a crack in my ideas and infinite ability. This crack is another color bleeding out from blended paints. The colors I apply to the canvas are a vehicle to unfold the world in a way that surpasses my expectations. These colors have different characteristics but play the role of unifying many elements and aspects on the canvas. Within my painting is a peaceful world where all move beyond boundaries freely. Utopia of Reality- Beauty The dreams, ideals, and hopes we have lost or forgotten as we live. The pursuit of my paintings is to express the warm hearts and hopes we have. There is a gap between reality and ideals but in my paintings, these things appear to be aligned as one. True beauty comes from the heart. Surface beauty changes with time and environment. But the beauty that comes from the heart does not change. People want to be beautiful. A good and good heart makes my mind beautiful and life will be beautiful if I look at the world positively. The people who appear in my work are diverse, but the common thing is to express inner beauty. My painting is to look at the world from a beautiful perspective. Beauty is a wonderful thing that humans can pursue.

Jinyoung Koh

Jinyoung Koh is a graduate program director and an assistant professor in Department of Art + Design, Art History, Art Education at Towson University in Maryland. Dr. Koh completed a Doctor of Education in Art & Art Education from Columbia University in New York. He earned a Master of Fine Arts from the California Institute of the Arts and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His art has received numerous awards and is included in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Rockefeller Foundation. Each stroke of the brush is placed to convey the delicate movement and fluidity of the glaze through natural brush strokes, creating a dynamic composition and engaging woven layers. The layering and blending of subtle colors in the glaze create a unique and ever-changing surface, each piece a reflection of the moment it was created.

JIhoe Koo

Born in Seoul, trained in France and Korea, and based in New York, I work in multiple media, from printmaking to illustration to installation art. I am interested in exploring time and memory with a printmaking series about childhood and self-rediscovery. My pieces begin with digital printmaking, then incorporate drawing and collage through photography, linocut, stencil, raster graphics editing, pencil, ink, marker, watercolor, paper, and threads. The children in my prints are colorfully dressed, but their faces have no color; they could be anyone, everyone, reminding viewers of their own childhood. Children become a mirror.

Eunkyung Lee

Eunkyung Lee, originally from Seoul, South Korea, embarked on a transformative artistic journey after moving to New York in 2000. Traveling extensively throughout Europe, including Italy, France, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Germany, Czech Republic, and Austria, she absorbed diverse cultures, shaping her unique artistic language. Lee’s works transcend borders, bridging different traditions and capturing the essence of human experience. Her art invites viewers to explore and reflect, offering glimpses into the beauty found within our shared journey.

Kyunglim Lee

Kyunglim Lee creates artwork with corrugated cardboard. Having majored in oriental painting, Her paintings are part 3D sculptures, made with resin on paper. Corrugated cardboard is an inevitable by-product of modern mass production and transportation systems. The cardboard, with winding symmetrical curves on its surface, stands for its necessary usage in today’s commercial society as a reliable packaging medium. In her work, cardboard that has tacitly and murmurlessly finished its role as containers, protectors, and transporters of mass produced goods symbolizes a regeneration and a revival. In fact, She feel fairly limited when it comes to using colors as a sole medium of expressing textures. Instead, She cut and formed soft and attractive cardboard into small pieces and attach them together before adding the color and creating a sense of a sculpted paper form. Her work has been showcased in Seoul, Germany, Singapore, Hong Kong, Miami, Seattle and Houston. She has participated in numerous art fairs, and exhibitions. She has a BFA in Oriental Painting from the College of Fine Arts of Seoul National University. She resides in Queens, New York, where She works as a full-time artist.

Seungjin Lee

New York based artist and organizer of DigiAna Group. Seungjin Lee uses multi-sensory digital and analog media to create works that focus on augmented reality and the cultural intersections between human-felt experience and a virtually-impelled world. Lee was born in South Korea, spent his formative years following his parents as they repeatedly moved between Japan and South Korea, and received his BFA from Tama Art University Japan. Since 2014 moved to NY, he did lot of formats Art activities and organized events.

Leo Je-Eon Lee

Born in 1999, Leo Je-Eon Lee is an artist from Seoul, South Korea. Moving from South Korea to the United States in 2018, he is currently majoring in painting and printmaking at Yale University. He has a basis in graphic design, as he worked in branding at CDR Associates in 2021 and freelanced as a poster designer. A major project he attributed to was the recent branding of Gyeong-Gi Province (경기도), in which his original sketch was selected as the province logo. Since changing the scope of study to painting and printmaking, he has stuck to the medium of oil paint on wood and paper. He focuses on his concept of “shitty translation,” in which he aims to process images as if one would translate languages.

Artist Statement: Whether it is graphic design, painting or printmaking or bookmaking, I am interested in translation from one language to another. Language has the power to territorialize, and I, as a Korean with an f-1 visa, interpret the culture and language of this country through translation. In translation, we often believe that it is the content that must be preserved. However, how can words be unaltered in a new context? It is impossible, just as it is impossible for me to be the same person in the United States as I was in Korea. Instead of struggling to preserve something that cannot be preserved, I focus on how to give up, tweaking meanings and creating new ones in my own process of “shitty translation.” Shitty translation can happen between any language. Translating from Korean to English, I can translate 구린 번역[gu-reen bun-yuck], which means shitty translation, into Green Translation. Also, as a visual artist, it is important to me that such translations include visual language just as much as any other form of communication. For instance, translating from eye to photo, from photo to hand, and from hand to painting, I can pull out just the shadow patterns of a certain moment that catches my eye. Most of my images are created through many iterations of this process. This process of shitty translation is defined by the following rules: Shitty translation respects the translated-from. Shitty translation respects the translated-to. Shitty translation respects the context and surroundings of the environment it is translated to. Shitty Translation tries to maintain, but it gives up when it has to give up. Shitty translation does not aim to overcome the language barrier. Shitty translation admits language barrier. If you don’t understand my shitty translation, it is okay; as a reader (in the sense that Roland Barthes asserts), you may “shittily” interpret it in any way you want. Shitty translation is not bound by grammar rules. Through this process, I lose parts of the original. As I go through multiple iterations of this operation, I can distance myself more and more. In my own precious world of fiction, I allow myself to get aloof and observe, and then read and write again. As I get distanced, at the same time, I get closer to something, perhaps something more important than what is lost.

Jessica Lee

Jessica Lee is a multidisciplinary artist from East Los Angeles, California. She lives and works in New York, New York. She earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Art Studio at the University of California, Riverside and her Masters Degree in Fine Art at Parsons, the New School for Design. Her work consists of small scale hand-cut paper collages and hand sewn soft sculptures. Inspired by memories, photographs, and vintage toys, her works explore ideas of preciousness, longing, loss, and references to fluff.

Jiyoun Lee-Lodge

I am a Korean-born, Salt Lake City, Utah based artist. I make a portrait of an inner state-invisible state., rather than the physicality of people around me to understand myself and the world around me. My works represent my shifting identity as an immigrant, woman, or hybrid in a globalized world with a strong influence on Social Media. I make paintings, drawings, installations, and public art, influenced by surrealism and animation.

In my recent work series ‘Waterman the Stranger(2018-2019)’ is about a person, like me, who struggles to shape identity and stay in the state of flux in a new place or new circumstances. I started by asking – ‘if I mimic what an ideal life looks like in a new place, will I blend in well?’ In this series, I deal with alienation because of the pursuit of the self-defined ideal life. I illustrate myself as shifting water that repels, absorbs, reflects, and fails to show the figure’s struggle to find a place within its environment. The backgrounds reflect ‘a better life’ in Utah that I imagined. This series started from my struggle of settling in Utah after moving from New York. Waterman evolves during the Covid-19 pandemic. In ‘Waterman: Changing I,’ I explore displacement, anxiety, and isolation about the pandemic. During the early years of the pandemic, I, like countless others, have been confined to my house, experiencing absolute solitude and loneliness in a space meant to provide comfort. I mediated my access to the outside world through a screen-“a digital window”- that acted as both a means of connection and a source of alienation. This window opens to the excess noise of opposing ideas, the gut of images, information, the deluge of likes, dislikes, hearts, emojis, and the exhausting cacophony of what Bo Burham calls “anything and everything all of the time.” I finished ‘The Crossing,’ the public art for a new TRAX station in Salt Lake City, Utah, commissioned by the Salt Lake Arts Council and the Public Art Program. The sculpture invites viewers to notice the emergent, water-like qualities of Salt Lake City and Utah aspects. In particular, it asks the viewer to consider how people, as individuals and as communities, move like water in this place, with swells that carry new futures and possibilities. The recognition and acceptance of the future are carried in this sculpture idea. I want to continue raising awareness of the importance of each individual’s struggle, be open-minded to understand each other, and be flexible and evolve by understanding each other. To start that conversation, I would love to make art to break the ice and be the bridge of communication.

Brian Leo

Brian Leo (b. 1976) currently lives and works in New York City. Leo received a B.F.A from Mason Gross School of Arts / Rutgers University. Recent exhibitions include two person shows and solo shows at Megumi Ogita Gallery in Tokyo. Leo’s work has appeared in The Osaka Art Fair, The Seattle Art Fair, The San Diego Art Institute, and The Gwangju Biennale Hall. In New York, his work has been shown at Sotheby’s, Ille Arts, Amy Li Projects, Catinca Tabacaru Gallery, The National Arts Club, INVISIBLE-EXPORTS (AMC) and Dumbo Arts Center. Leo is included in the Luciano Benetton Collection: Imago Mundi. His work has been written about in the New York Times, Time Out Tokyo, The Brooklyn Rail, Artnet, Hyperallergic, Whitehot Magazine, and New American Paintings. Leo auctioned in NOW: Art of the 21st Century with Philips De Pury (2010). In addition, Leo established Brian Leo Projects (2020) in NYC, and has been curating exhibitions featuring established and underrepresented artists.

Artist Statement: My work includes appropriating imagery and content from advertisements, the news, internet and pop culture, which I alter and give new meaning to. I incorporate this imagery and content with anecdotes from my experiences and references to my personal history. I am receptive to the mundane, ironic, clever, humorous, absurd and unjust parts of life, which I express by exhibiting clusters of small, brightly colored acrylic paintings. I use poetic imagery as a direct interpretation of what I experience: too many things at once or a narrative I try to understand.

Youngheui Lee Lim

Youngheui Lee Lim is a Korean contemporary artist and an avid student of calligraphy and fine art. She received her B.F.A. and M.F.A from Ehwa University in Seoul Korea and has been living and creating art in New York for twenty years. From 1995 to 1996, Lim volunteered to paint 103 Korean martyrs on canvas for the St. Paul Chung Ha Sang Catholic Church in Des Plaines, IL. This work inspired her focus on figures and postures, and on empathizing with different perspectives. After her first solo show at the Culture Center in Pomona, NY in 2006, she further developed her style, emphasizing the line. Her work since then represents a body and dialogue of lines limning human stories and relationships. Lim was one of 26 artists selected for the 2021 Social Distancing Festival in partnership with the Consulate General of Canada in New York and Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art Altoona, PA. Her work was recently featured at the Rotunda Gallery in New Rochelle, NY, Riverfront Gallery in Yonkers, NY, Stable Gallery in Ridgewood NJ and Future Dream West Nyack, NY in 2022.
Lim teaches art to students living with autism, cerebral palsy, and Down’s syndrome at the New Beginning School in Cresskill, NJ.

Artist Statement: As a child, I developed empathy for people’s struggles and emotions, as well as an interest in my own emotions. My work gives shape and space to these ineffable emotions. With multiple lines, my recent work focuses on my own emotions and narrative arc. The lines both create personal space and boundaries and interweave and connect me with others’ worlds and stories. Through the repetition of lines, I strive to define my identity and make tangible meaning of myself as an artist and person.

Tricia McLaughlin

Tricia McLaughlin is a physical and digital media artist whose work has long focused on mutation—not only as the subject of her art, but also in how that art is made and presented: Paintings are inserted into animation; 3D-designed constructions inspire paintings. Her artwork and animations have been internationally exhibited at museums and galleries, including Palais de Tokyo, Stedelijk Museum; ARCO, Madrid, Spain, Art 42 Basel, Swiss Architecture Museum (SAM), International Incheon Women Artists’ Biennale, Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts, Contemporary Art Center of Virginia and the Bronx Museum. Public art projects include her 3D animation “Virginia Beach Aquatecture”, commissioned for the Virginia Beach Conference Center, Virginia Beach, VA. and her animation of “delirious” was shown in Times Square as part of the “In Between” video projection series by ZAZ10TS. She has been awarded various grants and fellowships, including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005 for her work in 3D animation, two grants from the Jerome Foundation, and an Artist’s Fellowship from New York Foundation for the Arts. McLaughlin received an MFA from Hunter College and a BFA from Syracuse University. She lives and works in Harlem, NY, USA.

Artist Statement: Inventions in biotechnology, prosthetics, and robotics, and aviation have always fascinated me, and mutation has long been a theme in my work. Playing with the ideas of restructuring nature and behavior, I use constructions based on my own logic, which often leads to geometry that is anthropomorphized: The structures and creatures become emotional and start considering the social interactions they affect, and how their own bodies are mutating to adapt and change their environment. Function follows form that has the physical world twisted into submission. I am asking “What if…?” with the images that initially come from a stroke of paint. As I pull out forms from what I see, a narrative of the invented hybrid character and its spaces emerges. With the final image, I bring it into 3D software and animate how it may function in a physical world, as if engineered by a NASA of the Impossible.

Watson Mere

Watson Mere is an award-winning visual and performance artist who has been exhibiting his work for the past seven years. Mere’s work has been exhibited in galleries, museums and venues, which include the Barclays Center, Brooklyn, NY; Venice Art Gallery, Venice, Italy; The Oculus at the World Trade Center, New York, NY; Brooklyn, NY; The Billie Holiday Theatre, Brooklyn, NY; Norman Rea Gallery, York, United Kingdom, and The Africa Center, Harlem, New York. He has earned various awards including being a recipient of the 2022 Elizabeth Foundation For The Arts Studio Program, a 2023 recipient of the Frederieke Sanders Taylor StudioProjects Fund, the 2018 Citation of Honor (Arts) from the District Attorney of Kings County, and the 2018 Jean-Michel Basquiat Award from Creole Image Honors. In 2018, C-Suite Quarterly chose Mere as a NextGen 10 in Philanthropy, Art, & Culture. Mere and his work has been featured in publications and television networks such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vogue Magazine, Esquire Magazine, Artsy, NPR, News 12 New York, Philly Magazine, Broadway World, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Colossal, GlobeNewswire, Nylon, C- Suite Quarterly, and more.
Mere attended Florida A&M University, receiving a B.A. in Business Administration in 2011 and a Masters in Business Administration in 2015. He was born and raised in the town of Belle Glade, FL to two immigrant parents from Haiti. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, and maintains a studio at The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts in Times Square, Manhattan.

Artist Statement: I think of my work as a window. For some, the window reflects the viewer’s own experiences or ideologies, for others, it presents a view into a world they may have never noticed or understood, allowing them to analyze and consider new ideas and perspectives. My goal in each piece is to create an image that the observer can’t passively view but is drawn to engage with. The inspiration for my work is derived from the cultural complexities of those who identify with the African diaspora. I have a passion to provide a voice through imagery to those that society has left mute for so long. The foundation of this passion comes from my own voicelessness. As a child, I could not speak until the age of five and was taught to create art at the age of two to communicate. My inability to speak at the toddler and pre-schooler age led me to become incredibly observant and honed my ability to translate these internal and external observations into art. In a sense, for my entire life art has been a constant vehicle I have utilized to express myself. At the age of thirteen, I discovered the program Microsoft Paint and this along with acrylics, oils, pastels, and other mediums has been my voice to reflect on the times ever since. My intent for each symbolically layered piece is to create a meeting ground where modern themes of black culture and ancient African symbolism can communicate a griot-like story to the viewer. The magnifying vibrant colors draw the observer in as the subject matter displayed before them, silently tells a story that sparks their imagination, as to what the piece says to them.

Jean Oh

Jean Oh (b. 1993) is a New York-based artist who explores the layering of memories, observations, emotions, and relationships rooted in personal stories and experiences, while also examining the subtle imperfections and absurdities inherent in our lives. She received her BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and her MFA from Pratt Institute. Oh was awarded the Silver Prize for the AHL-T&W Foundation Contemporary Visual Art Awards. Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Nars Foundation and Iron Velvet Gallery in New York, as well as group shows at Space 776 Gallery and AHL Foundation Gallery in New York, and the CICA Museum in Gimpo, South Korea. Oh’s paintings zoom in and rearrange ordinary yet personal objects, such as couches, scars, and old family photos, using warm, washed, and muted colors to create abstract-like forms. Her aim is to spark unexpected perspectives, inviting viewers to look beyond the surface of seemingly ordinary experiences.

Artist Statement: My work focuses on the subtle imperfections and absurdities that are inherent in our lives, drawing out memories, observations, feelings, and identities from ordinary objects rooted in personal stories and experiences. I present everyday but personal objects, such as couches, human body parts, unreadable faces, scars, family, and old photos, which I zoom in on, rearrange, and repeat using layered, warm, and muted colors. Through repetitive process of wiping, washing, sanding, drawing, pouring, scraping, and repainting, I create multiple layers and ambiguous forms that blur the line between representation and abstraction, furthur enhancing the disorienting effect of the work. I also irregularly sew the canvas itself to create a painting to structure and a sense of confusion that amplifies the ambiguous feeling of the work, encouraging contemplation and reflection. At first glance, viewers may struggle to identify what they are looking at. However, with deeper examination, they may discover familiar shapes and forms that they can openly interpret, creating a slight trigger of absurdity after pondering. My process is informed by personal experiences and a desire to express the paradoxical nature of human beings. The form of personal objects that are familiar to most people create a sense of relatability, connecting them with the work and prompting them to reflect on their own experiences. The moment of unexpected absurdity and unpredictable perspectives that come from recognizing familiar shapes within the work invites us to look beyond the surface and question our perceptions, embracing the unexpected and considering the different layers of meaning within seemingly ordinary experiences. By delving into the imperfections and absurdities that permeate our lives, my work exposes the inherent instability and irrationality of human experience. It challenges the notion of objective truth that humans are purely rational beings, highlighting the fluidity of human experience and our irrationality that often drives our actions. By creating ambiguous and layered forms and inviting viewers to question their perceptions and embrace the unexpected, my work emphasizes imperfection and ambiguity, revealing the contradictions and paradoxes that make us human.

Luis Pagan

Luis A. Pagan is an abstract painter, born in Arecibo, Puerto Rico and raised in the South Bronx. During childhood, his interest in art began in the 1980s graffiti movement, and drawing Marvel superheroes. Luis didn’t think of becoming an artist until he met his college roommate who was studying art education at Pace University in 1991. Inspired by art, creativity, and the will to learn something new, Luis enrolled at FIT in 1995 to study fine arts. He graduated Cum Laude in 1997 with an AAS degree. He continued his art education at Purchase College studying art history and painting in 2003. He was placed on the Dean’s list twice and earned his BFA in 2005. Since graduation, Luis’ work has been on display at over 100 venues throughout NYC, Westchester County, Florida, and Puerto Rico. To date, he’s sold approximately 50 pieces of art.

Saehyun Paik
Saehyun Paik (b. South Korea) is an artist currently based in New York. When Paik was young she was interested in color, composition, Mise-en-scene, design, and uncommon beauty. During her teenage years, Paik grew up in a competitive atmosphere trained with inherently talented artists, and developed her technical skills. At a young age, Paik worked towards her goal to be an artist by freelancing as an illustrator and designer at magazines. After graduating high school, Paik worked as a concept designer in the commercial design industry. During her time in the commercial world, Paik developed her passion for the fine arts. She attended Samsung Art and Design Institute and moved to the United States. Currently, Paik is an artist in residence at Chashama since 2019~2023.

Artist Statement: Saehyun Paik is New York City based abstract artist. Saehyun has several gallery and museum exhibitions. Saehyun is searching for all that the modern human experience lacks. Recently Saehyun has been experimenting and exploring abstract expression, through color combination, contrast, audacious brush touch strokes, and close color relationships.
Difficulty adapting to social situations in her early years and learned to create dialogues and rapport through art material themselves. At this time, she explores these ‘conversations’ by blending two or more media in each of her processes. Having former her communication style through painting repetition and learning Saehyun continues to explore people without representing them.

Chunbum Park

Chunbum Park, also known as Chun, was born in Seoul, South Korea, in 1991 and came to America in 2000. Park attained their BFA in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts in 2020. They then returned to Rochester, NY to pursue an MFA in Fine Arts Studio at the Rochester Institute of Technology, where they changed their pronouns and completed their degree in 2022. Most notable of Park’s exhibitions include the “Fresh Faces” at the Abigail Ogilvy Gallery (2021), “PAINT 2021” at the Silvermine Galleries (2021), “Brooklyn Seoul” at the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition (2021), “Sublime Nude” at the Limner Gallery (2022), “Summer Lovin” at the Treat Gallery (2022), and “The Expression of Onnagata: Fluidity and Timelessness” at the One Art Space (2022). In 2023, Park will be participating in “Our Bodies, Ourselves – 50 Years on” at the Upstream Gallery and “Vivid Vision” through the Art Fair 14C. Park runs their Emerging Whales Collective website (which is currently merged with the Office Space Gallery), where they interview artists and review exhibitions. Park has also recently begun to write exhibition reviews professionally for the Two Coats of Paint online blogazine, Art Review City, and the New Visionary Magazine.

Min Sun Park

Min Sun Park graduated from Gyunggi University of Fine Arts and Graduate School of Plastic Arts.

In Young Park

My artistic journey aims to portray my multifaceted identity, bridging the realms of Asian and Western cultures by reflecting upon the customs and experiences during my residences in Singapore, Korea and US.
Drawing inspiration from the profound essence of Korean aesthetics, my work endeavors to depict an inner landscape in a modern light, utilizing the luminosity of mother-of-pearl and the vibrant hues of Korean mulberry paper (“hanji”). The intention behind expressing through the use “hanji,” and mother-of-pearl that “a thousand years have passed” is to convey the concepts of light and darkness, transience and eternity. It aimed to capture the eternal nature of life that finite human existence yearns for.
This artwork features solid sculptured wood and/or wood panels, with a maximum size of 32″x64″. I will use mulberry paper to wrap the sides and faces of the sculptures and panels, inlaid with mother-of-pearls to create contrasting textures and colors. The use of Chinese ink, mineral powder, or natural lacquer from Korea will add depth and vibrancy to each piece, making them truly unique. In Young Park is a graduate of Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, M.F.A. and B.F.A at Hong-Ik University in Asian Painting. She remains active in the art community in the New York metropolitan area.

Mickey Parkhill

Mickey Parkhill is a New York City born and based artist. They work in a variety of mediums including soft sculpture, ceramic, and illustration. Find them on Instagram @crush_puppie. I Thought I Knew Everything Until I Didn’t is inspired by the illuminating force of creativity and artistic inspiration. The further I have gotten into my journey as an artist, a trans person, and even just as a human, the more I have realized that there is an infinite well of possibility and inspiration in the world around me. Every day, I try to take in the beauty that surrounds me, while simultaneously reflecting it back into the world.

Jiwon Rhie

Jiwon Rhie is a Korean multidisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn. Her work deals with diverse subject matter across installations, sculptures, and video, exploring ideas of boundaries, human relationships, cultural identities, and communication. She holds an MFA from Pratt Institute and a BFA from Hannam University and Hongik University. She has exhibited extensively, notably at Mana Contemporary, Transmitter Gallery, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, Hannam University Museum, Home Gallery, Daejeon Museum of Art, and Spring Break Art Show among many others. She is a recipient of The Bronx Museum of Arts AIM Fellowship, AHL – T&W Foundation Contemporary Visual Art Award, Monira Foundations Artist in Residence, Queens Art Fund Award by The Queens Council on the Arts, and NARS Foundation fellowship. Her forthcoming solo exhibitions include P.A.D. in 2023 and La MaMa Galleria in 2024.

Artist Statement: My practice delves into exploring adaptation, identity, and boundaries through sculpture, video, and installation. By merging architectural spaces with daily necessities, found objects, and representations of the body, I foster unfamiliar dialogues, emphasizing the tensions and relationships arising from these unique encounters. Conceptual boundaries related to language, race, culture, and nationality are at the core of my work, visualizing their execution in our daily lives. As a project-based artist, I simultaneously engage in multiple bodies of work, each visually distinct, yet united in addressing the themes of adaptation, identity, and boundaries. My art reflects my connection with the environment, encompassing the communities I belong to, the spaces I inhabit, and the people I encounter. This multidisciplinary approach allows me to select materials that effectively express my ideas carefully.

Hyunjoo Yang

I am a member of the Korean American Contemporary Arts,LTD (한미현대예술협회),I have my own pottery studio in flushing. I love traveling. #potter #artist #hiker

Yeon Ji Yoo

The presence of dust and dirt signify that aging and decomposition have begun. Dust also means there has been a long enough history to compile. The dirt is nutriment and feeds the stores of seeds that hold my memories. About three years ago in my parent’s basement in Bayside, I opened a dresser – a piece of furniture I had not seen since I was a child growing up in a small Flushing apartment. Its smell hit me and made me feel as though the contents of the dresser drawer contained my whole life – my parents, the farm where I spent most of my early childhood, my past homes, my old schools, my whole life right up to the point where the drawer was last shut. It was a time capsule without any particular reference items. In opening that drawer, I thought of how something so insignificant could be the seed to such a strong evocation of a past lifetime. Smells and textures, sounds and images trigger the recurrence of a memory like the wind that shifts stale air trapped inside a drawer closed for a long time. Like a time portal, that opened drawer drags and pushes into my brain all the things I have forgotten. The dirt on my studio floor is the bed of my own garden. I am constantly walking in my private grove of trees that grew from seeds of long before. I try to find the richest fruits, a manifestation of my richest nourishments.