• Exhibition Dates: October 8, 2022 – October 26, 2022
    • Curator: Catherine Haggarty / Assistant Curator: Jiyoung Lee
    • Participating Artists: Priscilla Jeong, Kyuri Jeon, Sun You
    • Venue: AHL Foundation, Inc. 
      • 2605 Frederick Douglass Blvd., New York, NY 10030
      • Opening Reception: Saturday, October 8, 4-6p
      • Gallery hours: Wednesday to Saturday, 12-6PM
      • Free and open to the public

 

 

Catalog (PDF)

Foreword to the Exhibition

Before the formation of language – there were symbols, cave paintings and rock carvings. The desire to communicate transcends age, time, and culture. In all conditions, humans crave connection and security through language. I realize that language is a broad term – it can encapsulate the non-verbal, various symbols and signs, text and sound. In this exhibition – communication is shown in multiple ways through each artist’s choice of materials, subject and process. The work shown in this exhibition, Taking Form features digital collages, air dried clay paintings and assemblage sculptures that present us with work that reflects Kyuri Jeon, Sun You and Priscilla Jeong’s personal experience as Asian Americans dealing with transit, history, hierarchies, joy, and much more. The digital drawing collages by Kyuri Jeon speak to the markings and importance that tattoo’s can have on us. In most conditions, tattoos are done by choice of the individual or group to signify bonding, memories or heritage. This has played a pivotal cultural role for centuries in belonging and identity. However, in this raw and highly evaluative work – Jeon echoes the non consensual tattoos that North Korean and Chinese prisoners of war received during the 1950’s in her digital collages. This trauma plays out through generations via storytelling, photos and recurring experiences that trigger the war, patriarchy and colonialism that has shaped much of the world. The depiction and way the images and collages are synthesized speaks to the person of Kyuri and her interests, but also to the impermanence of the digital – and the permanence of skin. The confounding experience of these images by Kyuri Jeon has brought to mind the notion of challenging the hierarchies that keep some cultures and persons in debt to others. The dismissal of power dynamics is shown by the authorship and the democracy inherent in collage. The freedom of this work is its clarity, its directness and its ownership.

Sun You’s work addresses and embraces the idea of transit and location. Sun’s work embraces the reality of her life in motion and reconstitutes it with joy, touch, color and play. In her description of coming from a floor centered Korean culture, You’s work begs us to be grounded, to sit with it, to embrace it and in doing so it shifts our perspective of orientation. Sun’s work speaks of craft, the home and of the spirit while challenging our knowledge of a language or of knowing. There is an optimism in Sun’s work and a modest but sincere provocation that language and symbols don’t always have to make sense in the direct and literal way. The work asks us to break down ideas of knowing and to open up and listen. Two things can be true at once; and this is crystal clear while viewing the work of Sun You. Within each of the sculptures by artist Priscilla Jeong are layers of information and artifacts placed precisely but quietly through the forms. Communication comes to mind when viewing these anamorphic and almost scientific objects that very confidently and purposely take up space. References to machines, nature and architecture create a complex ecosystem in this work. The agency of this collage reflects a temperament that desires to synthesize information in the best way Jeong knows how to – to construct. Each sculpture is singular yet connected to a system and an order that provokes the tenuous ways we digest information and learn.

What seems most connective about these artists – is their voice and desire to challenge hierarchies of language, material and documentation. Each artist’s work is a fully realized version of their vision in scale, color, material and process. The three artists’ work featured in Taking Form have digested their experience and work both personally and culturally. This is, I believe, the mark of work which will stand the test of time. I am very grateful and proud to have juried, curated and now written about this work. It has been an honor to spend such time with the committee and the AHL Foundation. Congratulations Sun You, Priscilla Jeong and Kyuri Jeon.

 

Catherine Haggarty

Artist & Curator Associate Professor at the School of Visual Arts Co-Founder and Director of the NYC Crit Club

September 23, 2022