- Exhibition Dates: November 1, 2024 (Fri) – December 6, 2024 (Fri)
- Gallery Hours: Wed-Sat, 12 PM – 6 PM
- Location: AHL Foundation Gallery (2605 Frederick Douglass Blvd. #C1, New York, NY 10030)
- Curator: Ian Wallace
- Participating Artists: Kyung-Me, John Hee Taek Chae, C. Ryu
- Opening Reception: November 1, 2024 (Fri) 5 PM – 7 PM
AHL Foundation will hold the 2024 AHL-T&W Foundation Contemporary Visual Art Awards Exhibition at the AHL Foundation Gallery (2605 Frederick Douglass Blvd. #C1, New York, NY 10030) opening on November 1, 2024 (Fri). This year, the exhibition was curated by Ian Wallace, the Associate Curator at Amant, and will showcase a range of works including drawings, paintings, installations, and videos by this year’s awardees. Awarded artists, Kyung-Me (Gold), John Hee Taek Chae (Silver), and C. Ryu (Bronze), were selected as winners of the 2024 AHL-T&W Foundation Contemporary Visual Art Awards.
These exceptional artists circle the themes of ‘obfuscation’ in dynamic ways, questioning how ambiguity can be utilized as a creative tool to explore the thematic relationships between identity and reality. Their works, curated as one, delve into the productive potential of ambiguity, alluring audiences to engage with their innovative visual and conceptual artistic languages.
Kyung-Me’s intricate ink and charcoal drawings depict surreal architectural spaces, exploring the relationship between the figurative and the symbolic.John Chae’s paintings and installations explore identity as a second-generation Korean American through a blend of autobiographical elements and historical references, while C. Ryu’s thermal surveillance video installations address taboo images of the body in Korea and critically examine their relationship with silenced voices in the country’s historical context. Curator Ian Wallace says, “Through these artists’ works, we are able to begin to see the ways that these questions intersect with the experiences of immigration, cultural assimilation, being in diaspora, surveillance, and alienation; some of the most pressing social issues of our time.”
The AHL-T&W Foundation Contemporary Visual Art Award, one of AHL Foundation’s flagship programs, has been an annual open-call structured competition for Korean artists in the U.S. since its establishment in 2003. Since 2016, the award has been generously supported by the T&W Foundation, founded by renowned artist and cultural philanthropists Wonsook Kim, and Thomas Park Clement.
About the Artists
Kyung-Me
Half-Mourning
Iink and charcoal on paper, 18” x 24”
2018
Kyung-Me (Gold Award)’s work explores potential architectures of the subconscious and how images, objects, and memory are intertwined to conjure complex and spiritual spaces. Working predominantly in ink and charcoal, she creates drawings of labyrinthian spaces. In these interior worlds, she explores the seductive and sinister nature of entrapment structures. She is interested in the invisible architecture of entrapment — from the familial and societal to the psychological and spiritual. Kyung-Me (b. 1991, lives and works in New York, NY) graduated from the Yale School of Art with an MFA in 2018. Her work has been collected by the Whitney Museum of Art, Baltimore Museum of Art, and Magasin III. Recent shows include: “Sister”, Bureau, New York, NY (2022); “Introverse: Allegory Today”, 80WSE, New York, NY (2022); “Liminal Spaces”, Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin, 2019; “Coniunctio” with Harry Gould Harvey IV, Bureau, New York, NY (2019); “Poor Thing” with Sydney Shen, Hotel Art Pavilion, Brooklyn (2018); “Copy Kitty”, Selena Gallery, Brooklyn (2017); and “Bad Korean”, 17 Essex Gallery, New York, (2016). Kyung-Me is represented by Bureau (New York) and Kiang Malingue (Hong Kong). She is the author of two books, Copy Kitty, published by 2dCloud (2020) and Bad Korean, published by Spaceface Books (2016). She also teaches at Rhode Island School of Design, New York University, and the Pacific Northwest College of the Arts.
John Chae
A Dark and Bloody Ground
Wood, oil on linen, cyanotype, fabric dye on linen, silk, cotton, and polyester, Installation
2023
John Hee Taek Chae (Silver Award) is an artist and educator whose work is interested in the hybridization and mutation of visual culture primarily through the practice of painting. John received his BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2010 and his MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2020. His previous solo exhibitions include A Dark and Bloody Ground at Institute 193 (Lexington, KY), Shed Your Eyes at MARCH (New York, NY), Western Paintings at D. D. D. D. (New York, NY), and Make. Believe. at MOCA Jacksonville (Jacksonville, FL), among others, and he was awarded the MacDowell Fellowship in 2021 and was a Yaddo Fellow in 2022. He was the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Scholar in Residence at the University of Houston in 2023 and is now Assistant Professor in the School of Art and Design at Alfred University.
C.Ryu
Alice & Alice: in Free Fall
New Media 3 channel installation in fabricated blue room
2023-2024
C. Ryu (Bronze Award) is an interdisciplinary artist using translation as a tool to map forgotten histories – to reveal psychological shadows haunting | hunting the diaspora – and performs contemporary translations of rituals for the living. Ryu was born and raised in the United States to Korean immigrants. Ryu moved a total of 8 times over the first 18 years of life. Infatuated with moving, memory & movement, and migration, Ryu’s practice spans through mediums of performance, social practice, intimate gatherings, and video installations often using techniques conflating documentary and science fiction to parse through the warped nature of emotional time in migration storytelling. Tracing the edges of the hidden and silenced perspectives of the past to inform the personal and political of the present, C. visualizes narratives utilizing multiple voices in tension with each other to highlight the complicated structures of empire and power while unraveling imperial illusions through geopolitical poetry. C. Ryu is a co-founder and co-leader of Hwa Records, JADED (named 2022 People of the Year by the Pittsburgh City Paper), and Han Diaspora Group. Ryu has performed, exhibited, and culturally produced at Carnegie Museum of Art; Institute of Contemporary Art, San Francisco; McDonough Museum of Art; University of Southern California; LA Art Show; Kelly Strayhorn Theater; and more.
About the AHL-T&W Foundation Contemporary Visual Art Awards
Established in 2003, the Contemporary Visual Art Awards is an annual competition open to all contemporary artists of Korean descent active in the United States and is part of AHL Foundation’s core program. The awards recognize the work of exemplary young emerging contemporary artists of Korean descent and provide them with a monetary prize and the opportunity to have their work presented at a group exhibition in New York. Since 2016, the award has been generously supported by the T&W Foundation, established by Wonsook Kim and Thomas Park Clement
For media inquiries, please contact:
info@ahlfoundation.org
[한국어]
알재단, 2024년 AHL-T&W Foundation 현대미술상 수상 작가전 개최
- 전시 기간: 2024년 11월 1일(금) – 2024년 12월 6일(금)
- 갤러리 운영 시간: 수-토 오후 12-6시
- 장소: 알재단 갤러리(2605 Frederick Douglass Blvd. #C1, New York, NY 10030)
- 기획: 이안 월리스 (Ian Wallace)
- 참여 작가: 경미(Kyung-Me), 채희택(John Hee Taek Chae), 씨.류(C. Ryu
- 오프닝 리셉션: 2024년 11월 1일(금) 오후 5-7시
비영리 한인 미술인 지원 단체 알재단 (AHL Foundation, 대표 이숙녀)이 2024년도 AHL-T&W 현대미술상 수상 작가전을 오는 11월 1일(금) 알재단 갤러리(2605 Frederick Douglass Blvd., #C1, New York NY 10030)에서 개최한다.
본 전시는 2024 AHL-T&W 현대미술상 대표 심사위원을 맡았던 이안 월리스(Ian Wallace)가 기획했으며, 올해 AHL-T&W Foundation 현대미술상 수상자로 선정된 3인, 경미(Kyung-Me), 채희택(John Hee Taek Chae), 씨.류(C. Ryu) 작가의 드로잉, 회화, 설치 및 영상 등 다양한 작품들을 선보인다.
세 작가 모두 ‘모호함’을 예술적 도구로서 삼아 정체성과 현실 사이의 관계에 대해 독창적인 방식으로 탐구한다는 점에 착안하여 전시는 어떻게 그들이 모호함을 단순히 이해되지 않는 것이 아닌 창의적인 의미를 만들어내는 과정으로 사용하는지 보여준다. 각 작가는 전시에서 자신만의 고유한 방식으로 이러한 불분명함을 새롭게 해석하여 관객에게 신선한 시각적, 개념적 언어를 선사할 예정이다.
경미는 정교한 잉크와 목탄 드로잉을 통해 초현실적인 건축 공간을 묘사하고 그리드 안에서 얽힌 인물과 상징 간 관계를 표현한다. 채희택은 자전적 요소와 역사적 회화 기법을 결합한 작품을 통해 2세 한국계 미국인으로서의 정체성을 탐구한다. 씨.류는 열 감지 카메라로 촬영한 설치 영상 작업을 통해 한국 문화에서 금기시 되는 이미지를 다루며 이미지와 침묵당한 목소리의 관계를 비판적으로 다룬다. 전시는 이들의 작업을 통해 이민, 문화적 동화, 디아스포라에서의 경험, 감시, 소외감 등 오늘날 가장 중요한 사회적 문제들이 어떻게 교차하는지 살펴본다.
한편, 알재단의 설립과 동시에 시작된 현대 미술 공모전은 2003년 창설이래 매년 미국에서 활동하는 한국계 미술인이면 누구나 지원 할 수 있는 알재단의 주요 프로그램 중 하나이다. 2016년 부터는 중견 화가이자 문화 후원가인 김원숙씨와 토마스 클레멘트(Thomas Park Clement)씨가 설립한 T&W 재단의 후원으로 운영하고 있다.
참여 작가
경미(Kyung-Me)는 잠재된 건축물들과 이미지, 물체, 기억이 얽혀 복잡하고 영적인 공간을 만들어내는 방식을 탐구한다. 2018년 예일 미술대학에서 MFA(미술학 석사)를 취득하였으며, 그의 작품은 휘트니 미술관, 볼티모어 미술관, Magasin III에 소장되어 있다. 최근 전시로는 “Sister” (뉴욕 Bureau 갤러리, 2022), “Introverse: Allegory Today” (뉴욕대학교 80WSE 갤러리, 2022), “Liminal Spaces” (베를린 Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, 2019) 등이 있다. 또한 Bureau(뉴욕)와 Kiang Malingue(홍콩) 소속 작가로, 두 권의 저서 Copy Kitty (2dCloud, 2022)와 Bad Korean (Spaceface Books, 2016)을 저술한 바 있다. 현재 Rhode Island School of Design, 뉴욕 대학교, Pacific Northwest College of the Arts에 출강 중이다.
채희택(John Hee Taek Chae)은 회화작품들을 통해 주로 시각문화의 분화 과정과 이종 문화들 사이의 혼합 및 결합의 진화 과정에 관심을 가지고 작업하고 있는 작가이자 교육자이다. 그는는 2010년 Maryland Institute College of Art에서 미술학 학사를, 2020년 Virginia Commonwealth University에서 회화 및 프린트 메이킹 전공으로 순수미술학 석사를 취득했다. 주요 개인전으로 “Hallucination” (뉴욕 D.D.D.D. 갤러리, 2024), “A Dark and Bloody Ground” (켄터키주 렉싱턴 Institute 193, 2023), “Shed Your Eyes” (뉴욕 MARCH 갤러리, 2023), “Make. Believe” (플로리다 잭슨빌 현대미술관, 2014)이 있으며, 2021년 MacDowell Fellowship을 수상한바 있다. 2022년에는 Yaddo Fellow로 선정되었으며, 2023년엔 University of Houston의 Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center 레지던스 스칼러(Scholars in Residence)로 선정되었다. 현재는 뉴욕주 Alfred University의 미술 디자인대학 소속 조교수로 재직 중이다
씨.류(C. Ryu)는 살아있는 이들을 위한 의식을 현대적으로 번역하는 다원 예술가이다. 그는 한국인 이민자의 자녀로서 18년 동안 총 8번의 이사를 한 경험을 통해, 이동, 기억, 움직임, 이주를 주제로 퍼포먼스, 사회실천 친목 모임, 비디오 설치 등 다양한 매체를 통해 작업을 선보이고 있다. 또한 류씨는 Hwa Records, JADED(2022년 Pittsburgh City Paper에서 올해의 인물로 선정됨), Han Diaspora Group의 공동 설립자이자 공동 리더이다. 그는 Carnegie Museum of Art, Institute of Contemporary Art, San Francisco, McDonough Museum of Art, University of Southern California, LA Art Show, Kelly Strayhorn Theater 등에서 공연, 전시, 문화 기획을 진행한 바 있다.
