Guest Curator’s Exhibition ‘Coherence & Context’
Coherence & Context
June 15, 2020 – July 31, 2020
Online Exhibition
AHL Foundation Viewing Room
Taeseong Kim
ZAUN
Mookwon Han
Obra Architects (Jennifer Lee and Pablo Castro)
Curated by Soojung Hyun
AHL Foundation is pleased to organize this exhibition that explores the spatial relationship between architecture and the visual arts. Architecture is often associated with a refined physical form combined with a pragmatic function. Alternatively, the visual arts are based on aesthetics and the sensory aspects of communication. Whereas architects may apply the ideas and forms of artists to their aspiring projects, artists are more likely to envision their structural components from a non-functional perspective. The experimental, material, and functional intersections between architecture and the visual arts, when combined, have a tendency to bring out the richness, clarity, and meaning of how we live n our everyday world. The title, “Coherence and Context,” offers two contrasting terms, which could be read as paradoxical. Coherence suggests the particular environment of space with a logical manner and consistency, while Context refers to the condition of being within a specific space and time. The comprehension of space is not overdetermined. Rather the meaning vacillates according to how the subject is defined within the spatial environment.
Taesong Kim’s mixed media work is situated on painting, drawing, and sculpture besides assemblages of found a nd processed materials. Kim creates subtle series of various images of a “house” that is a residential space. The artist thinks the house is an open space that is fixed in a certain place and time. While the house is a large independent object, with itself a piece of mental nostalgia and memory, the house also implies his own memories and experiences with a poetic and intimate narrative. The process of making his drawing is based on the process of building a house. The bricks and sketches in the drawings represent a superposition of time, and the strength, speed, and saturation. The image of the house could be a kind of metaphoric transform of the artist himself; the two are separated beings interacting between them. He is not an abstract artist and the significantly reduced figuration renders natural and organic expression and appreciation. On the other hand, Kim’s profound interpretation of his living space as an immigrant addresses to understand how humans manifest themselves in space.
The work of ZAUN, generally drawing based, is characterized by the logical solidity and conceptual accuracy in her structural composition. She creates systematic rules in constructing her drawings, paintings and installations. Her work is based on the form of various grids. ZAUN deploys the grid as a metaphysical metaphor. The grid symbolizes change within a living space and dwelling within contemporary societies. She has a three-dimensional, architectural sensibility and explores the interplay of lines and shapes that create a tension between flatness and depth. Connoting architecture, cityscape, and topology, she straddles between seeing and perceiving. The process of her work reflects the intricate layers of human perception, and also constructs elements to emphasize the inherent duality of logic and illogic behind the rigidity of the systems.
Mookwon Han has worked by combining performance video and new media technology in New York and Seoul. He practices range across diverse mediums and goes beyond traditional artistic boundaries that was derived from his contact with calligraphy as a child. He pursues his aesthetic and philosophical exploration by portraying hieroglyphic characters in this complicated contemporary society. He has enhanced the possibility of communication by aggressively projecting three-dimensional letters onto space-time in a specific way and escaping fixed conventional ways of communication in a limited space, such as rendering letters with hand or brush and typing letters with a computer. While studying in the United States, he presented a video documenting a performance of repetitively overlapping letters on the ground by stepping or pounding the ground of his place with his feet and body. Traces of his actions of stepping and imprinting specific spelling by using his body hurriedly formed cerebral physical patterns.
Taeseong Kim
House, 2016
ink on paper, 18.9 x 24”
Taeseong Kim Kim earned his MFA from the School Of Visual Arts in New York after his other MFA from Chungang University in South Korea. Kim has been previously shown in several group exhibitions at the Queens Museum, Bronx Museum, and Gwangju City Art Museum. He was a recipient of the Artists In Marketplace 27 award from the Bronx Museum in 2007.
ZAUN
a hesitant cirrostratus that could make sense around amiable noonish, 2019
collage of etching prints on mulberry papers with glue and graphite, 8 x 8”
ZAUN, currently living and working in New York, Seoul, and London, has been exploring her vision through painting, printmaking, collage, and installation. She graduated with honors in philosophy from Alfred University in New York after she studied at the college of fine arts at Seoul National University. She has participated in various exhibitions since 2009 including the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Gallery, Brooklyn; The Church Center of the United Nations, New York; The Klapper Gallery at Queens College of New York; Incheon Culture & Arts Center, Incheon, Korea; and Lite-Haus Galerie, Berlin, Germany; Imago Mundi with the 55th of the Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Brooklyn Rail, Art Critical, ART [inter] New York, among others.
Obra Architects The two founders, Pablo Castro and Jennifer Lee, established their architecture firm in 2000. Obra seeks to develop projects founded on an intelligent form of design regularity that leads, through rational means of construction and fabrication, to an articulation of the unique spatial combinations necessary to urban living. Due to the dialectical vision of the projects, Obra Architects looks for the unique opportunity within systematic architecture: one that is neither dull nor insensitive to the needs of people, but that rather manages, through sensitive design, to be both smart in construction and generous in possibilities. Jennifer Lee and Pablo Castro seek methods of creating profitable urban development that also helps to realize the potential of human life for those who live in them. Jennifer Lee and Pablo Castro have worked on some high profile projects, such as their winning installation, BEATFUSE! for the MoMA/P.S. 1 Young Architects Program in 2006. Together, they have accumulated an impressive portfolio that demonstrates their ability to conceive and respond to place. They have extensive experience in coordinating the complex for successful creativity. Their recent project, Perpetual Spring Pavilion was installed at the open space of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Korea.
Mookwon Han
Poem, 2019
UHD Video/Sound 56 sec, Dimensions Variable
Mookwon Han received an MFA from the School of Visual Arts NYC (2006), attended the Skowhegan School (2008) and participated in residencies at Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts (2015-16), Seoul Foundation for Art and Culture (2013-14), Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace Program (2011-12), LMCC’s Arts Center at Governors Island (2010), Art OMI (2009) and CUE Art Foundation (2008) and was a Smack Mellon Hot Pick. He was awarded a Korea Hydro Nuclear Power, Co. and Gyeongju Cultural Foundation Grant (2020), Puffin Foundation Grant, and New York Foundation for the Arts Artist Fellowship in Digital/Electronic Arts (2009) and joined as a review panelist (2014/2017).
Obra Architects (Jennifer Lee & Pablo Castro)
@ the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Korea
Obra Architects
Jennifer Lee cofounded Obra Architects with Pablo Castro in the year 2000 in New York City. She has co-directed the design and development of over 170 works including many award-winning projects recognized internationally. She is a graduate of Harvard College cum laude and the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. She has taught at Pratt Institute Graduate Architecture, the Cooper Union, and at Korea National University of Arts. She is the 2007 Cooper Union Urban Visionary Emerging Talent, 2006 NYFA Fellow, a 2003 SAH de Montëquin Senior Fellow, and has been inducted into the Cooper Union Alumni Hall of Fame. She is a Seoul City Public Architect selected by the City of Seoul Metropolitan Government and is also, together with Obra, a designated contract recipient of NYCDDC’s Design Excellence program. Jennifer Lee is a licensed architect in New York, New Jersey, DC, Maryland, and a LEED-Accredited Professional of the United States Green Building Council (USGBC).
Pablo Castro’s design direction at Obra Architects has produced a body of award-winning projects: six AIA NY Design Awards, the 2008 ID Annual Design Review Award, and two 2004 Chicago Athenaeum American Architecture Awards. He graduated from the Universidad Nacional de San Juan in Argentina and holds a masters degree from Columbia University. He is a 2006 NYFA Fellow, a 2003 SAH de Montëquin Senior Fellow, a 2012 Rome Prize Fellow of the American Academy, and a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects. He has taught and lectured at RISD, Parsons the New School, Barnard Columbia, Pratt Institute Graduate Architecture, Cranbrook Art Academy, Korea National University of Arts, Central Academy of Fine Arts (China), UC Berkeley, and Universidad Nacional de Chile, among others. Pablo Castro is a licensed architect in New York and Connecticut, and an architect and landscape architect in Argentina.
