A Requiem in the Garden Images

A Requiem in the Garden opening reception at the Stokes was a blast! Great turn out with many friends, professors, and visitors...! Thank you so much for those who came out to support...! Gallery Stokes put up some images of the show. You can check them out at www.gallerystokes.com.

I decided to post some installation process photos. Staci Stone was an incredible helper in sprinkling the shredded cemetery flowers for two entire days. Thank you, Staci!
More photos will be posted with some writings about the work, so please stay tuned!

- happy G. since she's completely done with her MFA.

Opening Reception Tomorrow

Daniel Quinn from Stand Alone Gallery, installing a temporal gallery space for the performance for tomorrow!!!





A Requiem of Garden
Stokes Gallery
261 Walker Street SW, Atlanta, GA 30313

Opening Reception
Friday, August 28th, 7 - 9PM
Collaborative Performance with Juri Onuki and Stand Alone Gallery
Friday, August 28th, 8PM

Gallery Hours
Friday 12 - 6PM
Saturday 1 - 5PM

The installation looks beautiful. Can't wait!

- G.

A Requiem in the Garden - In Progress

Taking the fabric flowers apart...





Some snap shots of my current installation A Requiem in the Garden at the Gallery Stokes.
It looks quite beautiful - and indeed, the hours of installation have been long...

Thanks to Staci Stone, Jiovnni Tallington, Tina Han, and Stephen Hayes, and Dayna for their help!

One more day of installation!


- G.

Mourning Over the Presidents

Former President Kim Dae-jung

Former President Ro Mu-hyun

Recently Korea has lost two former Presidents.
The masses of people and the intraicate arrangement of flowers just fascinate me.

Summer Falls at White Space

White Space Gallery is such an enjoyable space to visit. Its opened area between the gallery and the house holds much pleasant energy for people to chill with some drinks. With bulb lights and trees, I remember one of my friends saying, "this would be a perfect wedding reception place!"

Anyways, John Otte put together the exhibition Summer Falls with other artists including Mark Wentzel. As this summer is ending, the curator John Otte arranged his new work in conjunction with other artists' work in this theme of 'creative destruction.' As my friends and I discussed, the photographs and images on the wall barely caught our attention. Yet the multi-media collaboration taken in a space after Otte's remnants of what it seems to be 'home,' was intriguing. Each artist's identity was vague, which didn't bother me much. It was interesting to see how each work has a new frame of context in this exhibition, coming together as one body of work.

The exhibition closes next Saturday, August 29th and there will be a talk by the curator at White Space soon. Stay tuned.


- G.

Louise Bourgeois and Briony Tallis

“A lot of people are so obsessed by the past, they die of it. This is the attitude of the poet who never finds the lost heaven, and it is really the situation of artists who work for a reason that nobody can quite grasp. Except that they might want to reconstruct something of the past. It is that the past for certain people has such a hold and such a beauty…”

- Louise Bourgeois, Destruction of the Father Reconstruction of the Father

Destruction of the Father by Louise Bourgeois

Fabulous looking Louise Bourgeois

Atonement (2007)

James McAvoy as Robbie Turner and Keira Knightley as Cecilia Tallis

Saoirse Ronan as Briony Tallis (age 13)

Vanessa Redgrave as Briony Tallis (age 77)

I am currently fascinated by ideas of:

childhood
lens of a child
re-creating a story
one's attempt to re-create the past which becomes a ritualistic obsession
and how all of these come together as an endless source in my own art making


Major impetus of my art making is to reconcile what has been lost or morphed in childhood through visual forms to convey a poetic poignancy and sympathy from the audience. The film Atonement beautifully depicts a thirteen-year-old girl Briony Tallis’ perception about the happenings around her. This specific notion of ‘lens of child’ and the unchangeable consequences of actions Briony takes with her child instincts was eye opening for my own interpretation of childhood and post-effects of dramatic events. This journey of untangling the morphed memories and relationships takes a toll on Briony until her old age, yet it reveals about how one can live in the childhood with some sort of re-created fantasy, guilt, and remorse. At the end of the film, Briony is an aged author who writes a memoir which rewrites a traumatic story of her older sister Cecilia and her lover into one which they all hoped for.

So I started to draw this parallel between Louise Bourgeois, an artist who's obsessed with her childhood memories in her art making, and this character Briony Tallis. I think they definitely could have been good friends for each other.


Maybe I could be their friends, too.



- G.

North Korea Art Exhibition Interview

And we were able to raise $1600 to support the soymilk factories that feed the orphans. Thank you for those of you who supported and visited this exhibition!!!


- G.

Thesis Exhibition - A Requiem in the Garden

Finally... my thesis show will be held at the Gallery Stokes.
Opening on Friday, August 28th, 7:00PM.

Contemporary artists on reality TV show BRAVO...

LIFE IMITATES FOOX (Reality Show Preview) from Gary Gimelfarb on Vimeo.

I am very curious to see how this new series of reality show will unfold...
the preview of this couple Mr. and Mrs. Foox depicts the process of how shows are doing and all, but it all seems very much scripted, edited in order to build up this storyline to produce certain character mode for the show.
Living as an artist often is not as dramatized and idealized as what you will see on this video.

OK, I concur and applause on the positivity here, but really -
is that what we are about? Can a few characters of artists in this upcoming reality possibly demonstrate what our lives are like to the general public?

In the Garden -

I come to the garden alone while the dew is still on the roses,
And the voices I hear falling on my ear, the Son of God discloses.
And he walks with me and he talks with me, and he tells me I am his own;
And the joy we share as we tarry there, non other has ever known.

- In the Garden, C. Austin Miles, 1913


Historically, the immemorial flowers were used to initially control the obnoxious odor of body decomposition. The fragrance of the flowers would hide the decomposing body smell long enough for the funeral ritual to take place. There was a role of the Flower Lady in Mid Western funeral practices. The Flower Ladies, usually in a group of six, would carry the flowers and assist in setting up the flowers at the cemetery. They were usually close friends of the family and considered as an honor to be chosen as the flower ladies for a funeral.

Fascinating!