Seo Mira: Sensitivity
Time: January 20 – July 20, 2018
Opening reception: Wednesday, January 24, 5:00 – 7:00pm
Location: Bank of Hope, 16 West 32nd Street, New York, NY 10001
Viewing Hours: M-F, 9am-5pm
The AHL Foundation in partnership with the Bank of Hope is pleased to present a six-month commission of artworks by Mira Seo to be on view at the Bank of Hope Manhattan Branch from January 20 – July 20, 2018. The opening reception will be held on Wednesday, January 24, 5:00-7:00pm.
Mira Seo’s solo exhibition, Sensitivity, presents the selected works from her recent paintings. The work of Seo is based on a unique view of nature connected with a profound Oriental sentiment. As a Korean painter, her approach to nature is not merely on that describes nature as a form of realism. Rather the core of her work conveys meaningful aspects of human existence through natural images. Her work means to capture specific and delicate moments of nature that are essential to self – healing and historical clarity. Her work ultimately addresses the aim that the origin of existence is the spirit of life.
Seo has pursued the subject since she started her career after she earned the MFA from Chonnam National University in the early 1990s. Upon graduation, her first step focused on the turning point of Minjung Art in
Gwangju city as an art form that had faded from the resistance movement against non-democratic social reality. The central theme of this movement was translated by each artist’s individual attention and taste. She tried to find the humanity in her own experience with nature and the humble response of her neighbors’ stories rather than referencing a massive discourse. Seo has said that her paintings are engraved memories based on the actual landscape which has been absorbed through her body.
The plum blossom is the most predominant symbol in her painting. It implies the dignity found in traditional East Asian brush painting. The artist has chosen to invest the meaning of the plum blossom into her work, using it as a major theme. The center piece of this exhibition, Mugeuk (2011) represents the process of this flower at the moment of blooming. Mugeuk refers to limitlessness of life. Her painting evokes this paradoxical moment when the flower blooms for eternity as birth and life emerging together from a single flower. She once told a story that while she was in the act of finishing a painting she applied a sudden upward brushstroke to represent a dead tree branch. At that moment, she felt a unified ecstasy between the painting and herself.
Mira Seo was born in Gwangju City, Korea and received her MFA from Cheonnam National University. She has maintained her practices as a “painter.” Her over 20-year sincere efforts toward painting received the Grand Prize of the 13th Shinsegae Art Award in 2011 and received the 12th Oh Jiho Art Award in 2013. She was selected as a of the Beijing Art Residency organized by the Gwangju Museum of Art. Seo continuously exhibited in Gwangju, Seoul, and Beijing.
