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Thursday, December 30, 2010

Flower Cutting Hasn't Stopped . . .





Last year on December 31st, I posted preparation images of cutting flowers for my show Repose at Get This! Gallery. 
http://gyunhur.blogspot.com/2009/12/happy-new-year-everyone-thank-you.html

Well well,
Flower cutting has not stopped.

After I came home from Virginia, first thing my mother showed me was the basement full of silk flower boxes and a new set of paper cutters. So we started cutting again - with more efficient adjustments, such as having higher chairs, heavier paper cutters, covering noses and mouths from dust... same music is playing with similar gossips and conversations, and I cannot seem to believe how quickly time has passed this year.

It has been an incredible year. Starting with my first solo show with Get This! Gallery, many opportunities and rewards came that encouraged me to continue committing in this thing called 'being an artist.' I am incredibly grateful for generosity that has been given to me and excited for this coming year 2011.

I am going to focus on polishing up my blog (please continue to read my posts, hopefully they will get more interesting and sophisticated with less grammar errors.) and actualizing a few projects next year. I will continue to cut flowers, work at an office part-time, do more yoga, and eat lunches with artists in Atlanta.

Stay tune. More posts before 2010 ends!


- G.

Friday, December 17, 2010

12 - my friend's poem, love, and more snow





My mom called after her day at a sauna.
"I am calling you to let you know that sauna and massage just made me so happy!"
"Oh really? You loved it that much?" I asked, brushing off some snow from my hat and gloves in my room. She rarely calls me to let me know that she is happy, I thought.
"Oh yes. I never let myself have a such a treat, and I am glad I did it today."
"Well. I am glad that you did it, too, mom."
"But you know... I felt bad for your dad," she spoke softly.
"Why is that, mom?"
"Oh, you know. Your dad has been working hard, too, and I felt bad that your dad didn't get to have such a treat. He doesn't like sauna anyways, but his legs have been hurting, you know. It was nice for me, but your dad..."

After all these years of living with my dad, bearing with him, and complaining to me about him, she still has this incredible compassion for him. She wants her husband to join her delights in life. Perhaps, that is love, I thought, being able to bear one another with such compassion and patience, missing the other's presence in your experience of joy and pleasure.


My friend Sam (I am not sure yet if I can call him a friend, but I will call him a friend) dropped his poetry book in my mailbox today, with two postcards inserted marking two poems, I assume, he would like me to read more thoroughly. So I did. And they touched me in similar ways Frost did during my high school and my inadequacy in understanding languages and theories did not seem to matter so much after reading his poems. Here is a short excerpt from his poem Accident (I will share his entire poem when the entry is shorter).

. . .
he would have to say, standing alone, his pulse snapping
against the sky, filling the veins of the night,
plasma, cartilage, bone – crying out for her,
her jacket flapping in the bush. He would have to say
that love does not mean preservation alone,
but also creation and destruction, and only then

is a thing complete, is it revealed, like the windshield
shattered sixty yards away, like Somayah dead,
sitting calmly in the grass, after the truck she crashed
flipped over fifteen times. Some things are impossible
and they come true. Maybe all things.
. . .



- G.

Thursday, December 16, 2010

11 - snow and poetry

 




Dust of Snow
 gif
by Robert Frost (1923)

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.



Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
 gif
by Robert Frost (1923)

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

I remember Robert Frost's poems touching something in my heart when English was still quite new to me. Here, I am meeting many writers and getting a sense of how they may see the world. And... it's quite beautiful - their sensibility with words, syntax, and plots in describing life. I wanted to be a writer when I was in Korea - as a young girl, I would pull my hair out writing a poem about a dandelion. I wonder... if I could still dream of becoming a writer.

- G.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

8, 9, 10 - Art in America



Art in America Magazine (December 2010)


So I picked up Art in America December issue a few days ago and read most of articles. I haven't read art magazines awhile, so I attempted my 'studies' with the magazine with curiosity and excitement - to see what is up with current contemporary art in America. All very interesting, in fact, I was really resonating with one particular artist’s work - Simon Fujiwara, especially his Frozen piece viewed at the Frieze Art Fair. Also The Feature Story (story about the founder of Feature Inc. - Hudson) written by Steel Stillman grabbed my attention.

Gallery stories –
Hudson's ideas about managing a gallery space, what an art space should be like... were refreshing. A list of up-front contemporary artists who showed at his space at the beginning of their careers was indeed impressive. To brag about my gallery Get This! Gallery in Atlanta, I thought some of characters of Hudson were similar to Lloyd Benjamin (gallery director of Get This!)'s. For my first solo with the gallery, he gave me an open invitation to 'just do my work' and carry out my vision without a pressure of anything else – such as sales. He helped me to refine ideas and collaborated with my work and fabrication. Such permission from a commercial gallery, I thought, was unusual. Lloyd’s support was incredibly crucial in my exploration of space and growth as a young artist.

Repose at Get This! Gallery, 2010

OK, this is going to be a little bit long as I chew on some things - I don't want to feel like I am writing another version of a graduate school paper, but it may sound like it. So bear with me.

Simon Fujiwara

Fujiwara’s Art Stardom –
Art in America extensively covered Fujiwara's story and works. Beautiful images and an intriguing story in 8 pages. That’s called a stardom when Simon Fujiwara is only 28 years old. Graduated from Cambridge University as an architect, Fujiwara showcased his site-specific installation Frozen (2010) at London’s Frieze Art Fair that also marked the artist’s receiving of the Frieze Foundation’s Cartier Award.





Combining multi-medium installations and performances, Fujiwara is able to create a faux history and a place where remnants of his constructed history reside. His biography is deeply embedded in his works. Being half-Japanese and half-British, the article points that Fujiwara’s works reflect “a sense of cultural dislocation, combined with related sensitivity to conditions of economic inclusion and exclusion.” Fujiwara even states, “I am my work.” Repeatedly, I come to conclusion that an artist’s biography is an endless sources of his or her creative practice. In whatever ways artists' biographies are manifested, Louise Bourgeois was right.
“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
Toni Morrison also quotes, “memories and recollections won’t give me total access to the unwritten interior life… only the act of the imagination can help me.”

Within a context of recent discussion of Miami Art Basel and so many art fair we now have, Fujiwara also is able to point out the system of art ecology in this contemporary era. Considering that his work Frozen is a part of the Frieze Art Fair, I applaud his acute and conscious sensibility to critique the art fairs’ ‘consumerist context.’ Alex Gartenfeld quotes, “Fujiwara’s Frozen City at Frieze served as a reminder that the art-fair network will eventually be lost to history, and as a morality tale about the ultimate futility of acquiring artworks.”

Fujiwara was able to insert his biography and ideology into the current system of art world instead of the other way. I find that important and impressive. Recognizing that artists are ultimately the driving engines in the art world is crucial in our survival as artists.

Well, he indeed has established an extravagant stardom in the art world right now.

To read more about his work, go to :


Art in America – white gentlemen artists

Please forgive me for this term, but it dawned to me a few days later that all the articles I read in Art in America were on white gentleman artists and dealers.  I was stunned that that didn’t appear to me as an issue at first – because I like all of their works and stories. And then I found myself perplexed by this situation. I believe artists should be viewed within a context of their works, not non-sensible identity politics. And this kind of discussion can get complicated and old. Yet was I to be completely content with reading every major article in Art in America on white gentlemen artists? Maybe some of artists in Letters to Young Artists are right about this, still relevant in 2010.  Here is an excerpt from our Guerrilla Girls:

“Sure, the art world’s better now than ever before, especially at the entry level where everyone wants to see what women and artists of color have to say. But galleries still overwhelmingly show white males, and up the ladder, at the level of museums, auctions, and art history books, there’s a crushing glass ceiling, way worse than in a lot of other fields.
Let’s face it, it’s hard for anyone to succeed at making art, especially in a system that manufactures scarcity, then sells it for big bucks to rich collectors. Museums suck up to these art investors, ask them to sit on their boards and let them decide what to save for the future. We think that’s a lousy way to preserve our culture!
So you need to make your work endures. Whether you do that as an art world insider or outsider, you’ll have to spend some time away from your work, out of your studio, communicating and engaging with whatever art world you decide to live in. Be aware of the system. Don’t be afraid to stand up and criticize it. Be inventive. Do some creative complaining!”
-        Guerrilla Girls

I have been fortunate in my early career as an artist despite myself being a woman and a minority. Many other women and color artists are in fact actively engaged with the art community in Atlanta: Jiha Moon, Fahamu Pecou, Lucha Rodriguez, Whitney Stansell, and many more. That’s beautiful and exciting. Yet a constant re-contextualizing and re-evaluating our system within the community AND outside of the community is necessary. As an artist blogger, I thought I had to voice this out somehow in an articulate matter. I hope I did an OK job. This was eating me up for a few days for some reason.

Please, comment as you wish. I think having dialogues is a great thing.


Peace, everyone.

- G.





Friday, December 10, 2010

5 - Serge J-F Levy's photographs

Being here at VCCA has been a wonderful treat. I'm meeting an amazing group of artists, authors, and a composer, and I'm struck by their generous spirit as well as artistic sensibility. Once again, over the dinner table, our discussions arranged from current projects we are working on to family histories, art schools in 70s and 80s, and novels. I've met a wonderful Chinese-American author whose mother was a film screenplay editor in Shanghai. A film maker and an artist talked about her adoption to America and in her searching for home and belonging. She went to CalArts back in 80s and how wonderfully raw that time was for art students. "Was John Baldessari there?" I asked. "Oh, yes. I would go and listen to his lectures. It was an interesting time." Then we concluded how different our current time is and how younger generation of artists (that includes me, I suppose) just know what they want and have to quickly adapt into a capitalistic structure of art world that exists today. Another author who just arrived last night talked about a novel he is writing. It's about a Korean woman who marries an American soldier in 90s and moves to Virginia. This author in fact lived in Korea in 1970s (a very unique time for South Korea) and talked about his experience of Korea then. Oh wow. Then we talked about how wonderful Chang Rae Lee's writings are, especially his first novel Native Speaker.

Native Speaker

. . .

Serge J-F Levy, a self-taught artist and a photojournalist, did his artist presentation last night. His photographs are absolutely stunning. He is now working on paintings - he mentioned how people automatically perceive photography as a form of truth, yet how difficult it is for a photographer to be objective with subjects in taking photos. Yourself is always somehow reflected in the process, and therefore he is now purely working on emotions surfaced through painting, not via lens or direct images that may seem arbitrary. You can check out his work at http://www.sergelevy.com/images.htm.



Thursday, December 9, 2010

4 - obsession

The Forgotten Founding Father: Noah Webster's Obsession and the Creation of an American Culture 
Last night at a dinner table, I ended up sitting right next to an author from Boston. His name is Joshua Kendall and he just finished writing a biography of Noah Webster, The Forgotten Founding Father. Joshua told me about his interest in people who are obsessive - and how their lives evolved with a particular drive that made them succeed. Wow. Of course, I went off to research a little bit more on the author's background and he also has written volumes in psychology as well. Now... I will have to have more chats with him.
 

About obsession -

in my flowers and cutting -

hah . . .


- G.


I plucked 6 boxes of white flowers past two days.

studio at night

On my way back home at VCCA

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

3 - having meals together

There is something about having meals together with people. As you 'break bread' together, an array of conversations unfold that can take you to so many different planes of understanding of each other and also projections of oneself.

I remember one of my lunch times with Sam and Jared at Ox-Bow. Somehow we started to talk about where we are from and how that relate to our making - from that conversation, I realized how much of my childhood memories have become a fantasy rather than an existing reality.

This morning - with a cup of coffee and yogurt mixed with dried raisins and banana, I experienced a very heavy conversation that started out as an artist's response to market and our struggle with genuine urge to create and intuition we follow... to our identities and labels we carry (which stemmed from societal and political structure) as artists and what that means. The dynamic of the table was incredible - a composer from Houston, a Chinese-American author from New York, a young Caucasian woman writer from Virginia, and a Jewish-descent photographer and painter from nowhere, and me, Korean-American artist from Atlanta.

It was only about 30 min. conversation, but quite hefty for a breakfast chat. But I was so delighted to be a part of discussion that rarely surges up back home in Atlanta. Is it... just being in the South that people don't talk about these things? Shouldn't it be a vibrant part of our conversations, especially amongst artists who are constantly battling with where we come from and why it is that we are making?

Oh - so I have plenty to think about today. I will be plucking a few boxes of white flowers today.


- G.





Tuesday, December 7, 2010

2 - Love thrift stores!






I went to a thrift store here in Amherst, VA, yesterday. Some of best inspirations and findings happen in thrift stores for me. So I went a bit crazy with all these figurines... aren't they great? I got them so cheap... and yes, I will be painting over them. Go to a close by thrift shop and see if you could find a treasure or two for yourself. It's really fun.

There are a lot more writers and composers here at VCCA. My second dinner night was great - they talked about films, work process, other residencies, and just usual 'how was your day' conversations. I think I am going to be very inspired by these artists here.

More to come!


G.

Monday, December 6, 2010

Interview with Art Relish


Gyun Hur from ArtRelish.com on Vimeo.

Here's an interview I did with Jason Parker from Art Relish. He has been very supportive in my past shows including my thesis A Requiem in the Garden at Stokes. This interview will give you an insight about my work, process, and more. Hope you enjoy it.

I drove up to Virginia yesterday to spend about 20 days at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.   It's so beautiful here and excited to meet other artists, writers, and composers. You know it, I'll be putting more posts about my experience here, so stay tune!

- G.




Thursday, December 2, 2010

Installation in progress images -

Today, my parents and I are going to Gillsville, GA to get some more silk flowers for the Flux project next year. That will be fun!

I was so tempted to share my installation images during the installation week at the Hudgens. Now I can freely share! 

P.S. We already have been having some troubles with the fragile installation at the Hudgens even with the protection ropes. Please go and check out the show if you can, but please be careful when you take a look at my floor installation. IT IS VERY FRAGILE. HAVE YOUR CHILDREN GUARDED.