Exhibition Catalog (Download)
- Exhibition Dates: June 18 – June 30, 2022
- Venue: AHL Foundation, Inc.
- 2605 Frederick Douglass Blvd., New York, NY 10030
- Opening Reception: Saturday, June 18, 5-7pm
- Gallery hours: Wednesday to Saturday, 12-6PM
- Free and open to the public
Foreword to the Exhibition
The AHL Foundation, founded in 2003 by Sook Nyu Lee Kim, supports visual artist of Korean ancestry living in the United States. The foundation presents a wide range of programing that fosters NYC’s artistic community. The annual Contemporary Art Awards program recognizes the significant achievements of three artists selected by a jury of art world professionals who designate financial support and visibility in three categories: the Gold, Silver, and the Bronze Awards. Recipients of these awards are also invited to participate in a group exhibition held in New York City, and this year’s awards mark the 18th year of this important program.
This year there were close to a hundred applicants, and many of them were highly deserving of support. It was a very difficult decision, but I feel fortunate to have been introduced to the work of all the artists who applied this year. The quality and diversity of the submissions was impressive and exciting. I have tremendous respect for AHL foundation’s award program, and am honored to have been invited to participate in the jurying process this year. I greatly enjoyed the discussions with my fellow jurors – Marshal Price, Curator at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University and Hallie Ringle, Hugh Kaul Curator of Contemporary Art at Birmingham Museum of Art. After a careful review and much discussion amongst us, the three winners were selected: Jin-Young Choi was awarded the Gold prize, Areum Yang the Silver, and Jiwon Rhie the Bronze. All three artists are making ambitious and sensitive work. We congratulate all of them on this prestigious distinction.
Jin-Young Choi, the Gold winner of the Contemporary Visual Art Awards, received his BFA in Fine Art from Kookmin University in Seoul and his MFA in Sculpture from Pratt Institute. He was an artist-in-residence at the Vermont Studio Center, ChaNorth Upstate and Trestle Gallery in Brooklyn. His work has been exhibited at Paradice Palase, Williamsburg Art & Historical Center, The Wassaic Project and in the 14th A.I.R Biennial curated by Jasmine Wahi.
Jin-Young Choi ‘s sculptures reflect an integration of traditional Korean motifs with contemporary technology, as well as a merging of prehistoric animal imagery with post-human sensibilities. The works encompass statuary, wearable art such as helmets and jewelry, and kinetic sculpture with lights, hand-held devices and projections. Shamanic animal masks alluding to cave paintings and rituals are combined with plugged-in pods a-la Cronenberg’s 1999 film eXistenZ. The Sci-fi qualities fuse in surprising ways with the decorative embellishments creating a fresh forecast for future modalities. The sheer variety of materials employed by Choi is in itself a testament to resourceful ingenuity, suggesting survivalist strategies and a foreboding of what the future holds.
Areum Yang, the Silver award winner, received her BFA in Painting from Hongik University in Seoul and her MFA in Studio Art from CUNY Hunter College in NYC. She has exhibited her work at Hauser & Wirth, New York and is the recipient of the Chung Mong-koo Foundation – Hyundai Motors Scholarship and Materials Grant.
Areum Yang’s expressive paintings exhibit both an economy of means and a cohesion of vision. These large scale works employ areas of loosely applied paint balanced with calligraphic use of dry brush, while portraying figures caught up in contortionist or fleeing postures. Painting Number 3 shows an exciting exploration into alternative planes within the picture plane – suggesting screens and virtual reality as universal themes now inextricably linked to the human condition. In the background of a starkly monochromatic painting Number 6 Yang presents a diagrammatic structure that skillfully and effortlessly alludes to a high rise building, suggesting that our love of the grid, and perhaps our obsession with order has gotten us into a prison-like cell.
Jiwon Rhie, The Bronze award winner, received her BFA in Painting from Hannam University in Daejeon, South Korea and her MFA in Painting and Drawing from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY. She is the recipient of the A.I.M. fellowship from The Bronx Museum of Arts and the NARS Foundation Fellowship. Her work has been exhibited at Governor’s Island, NY, Steuben Gallery, Brooklyn, Hannam University Museum, Daejeon, Korea and Gwang Ju Museum of Art, Gwang Ju, Korea.
Jiwon Rhie’s architectural interventions speak to notions of belonging and assimilating to new environments. IKEA furniture items are made at once useless and poetic by being miter-fitted to staircases, banisters, door frames and closets, anthropomorphized like a vine covering a brick building. Disposable furniture brings to mind student life as well as the immigrant struggle to survive in a new possibly hostile environment. It also alludes to the makeshift nature of the symbiosis between human-made and natural elements, materials and structures. Rhie’s Instant Forest works repurpose shipping materials and use images of custom forms slapped on packages sent from Korea by her mother. Collectively the work explores the nuanced ways in which our identities shift and meld into new forms through proximity to institutions and navigation of national and cultural norms.
I’m so grateful to be invited by the AHL Foundation to participate in the selection process for the Visual Art Awards 2021. I am impressed by the inspiring energy of the AHL Foundation’s Founder and President, Sook Nyu Lee Kim and also thankful for the guidance of Jiyoung Lee, AHL Curatorial Fellow and Program Manager, who made the jurying process so smooth for the jurors to navigate.
I hope that the artist receiving this important recognition will continue to thrive in their art practices, and I’m sure that the awards from AHL Foundation will prove formative for future developments and new opportunities to share their work with the public.
Leeza Meksin
Artist & Educator, Co-founder and Co-director, Ortega y Gasset Projects & Assistant Professor, Department of Art, Cornell University
August 14, 2021