Lenox Site Visit with Flux

 

Lenox Mall site for the installation (taken from above)

So Anne (Flux Projects executive director), Lloyd (Get This! Gallery), my parents, and I did our last Lenox site visit a few days ago.

This idea of doing the installation at Lenox started about a few months ago with Flux, and it is finally happening! It has been an amazing experience for me to work with Flux to actualize this project on an ambitious scale - 16 ft by 30 ft. For more information on the project Spring Hiatus and Flux, go to http://www.fluxprojects.org/hur/index.html. 

We are almost done with flower cutting (it's been almost three months since we started cutting), and incredibly thrilled to start the installation at Lenox Square Mall. The location is quite amazing. Right between the Macy's entrance and Sephora, it also got the second floor where you can have an aerial view of the installation. Oh fantastic!

For first time, the installation process will be viewed in public. As people are engaging in the process of installation, I hope that there will be curious dialogues and somewhat empathetic silence. We are planning to start the installation on March 1st and finish on March 12. 

We are still looking for some volunteers for installation process as well as docents, so please let me know if you are interested. I will post more details soon!

- G.

Saturyday Morning

Saturday morning brunch -

It has been awhile for me to have no events arranged for Saturday. Usually, on Saturdays, I would have to do errands, go to artist talks, participate in some projects, and meetings to catch up. This morning, I woke up not having to worry too much about the schedule for the day, except . . . flower cutting and video recording oh, and evening events at Get This! Gallery and Saltworks Gallery.  -_+

We usually eat a bowl of sticky rice with beans and a soup, along with some side dishes - various Kimchi stuff (fermented cabbages and radish). I was reading some The New York Times articles on my laptop while my parents were catching their news on Korean news channel on TV. Egyptians' protest was a big news in both media, so we talked a little bit about that. My dad mentioned how he was, too, once a part of protest against a militant government in Korea in 1970s and 1980s. Right after Korean War, South Korea also had to go through much tension and sacrificial blood to accomplish democratic government that exists today. To view images of Egyptians' protest, go to http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/01/28/world/middleeast/egypt-protests.html?ref=middleeast.

The Kwangju uprising of 1980, South Korea

Happy Saturday, everyone!
I will be cutting more flowers today, and oh, Happy 6th Anniversary, Get This! Gallery!!! Thanks for everything -

 - G.

Late Night Thoughts - placeness, blogging and twittering, Lenox project, writing, this weekend . . .

Studio calendar to keep track with schedule and number of cups of shredded flowers

So I'm up late tonight - with so many thoughts on my mind. To process my mind, I turned myself to blogging - oh dear. Where did that good, old writing on a journal go?

I, in fact, have been thinking a lot more about my blogging. As it is my resolution to polish up my blog this year, I also want to get more serious about writing as well. English is my second language, so I know my writing is lacking in its correct grammar. I also would like to see if I could improve my creative/critical writing, considering myself becoming a consistent art blogger and a commentator. Hey, I wanted to be a writer as a young girl, and if not a serious author, I still could be an interesting blogger at least!

This thing called 'social media' is changing the way artists represent themselves. We definitely have more control over our representation and persona. And this blogging activity allows an artist to process happenings around her, promote art events in community, share about art making with others, and critically develop an artistic voice that is valuable to the community as well as to other artists. 

According the website Zitzsolution, "Facebook has over 250 million users globally. On an average, 70-100 tweets happen by the second. An average user on Facebook has 120 friends." Now, that's mind boggling for real.  

I haven't quite figured out twittering thing yet. Well, I do not have a smart phone, so that explains much of it. Yet, I just found out people check out my blog via tweeter more than I expected! So I just changed the background of my twitter, so that it looks nice. Check it out and follow me! http://twitter.com/#!/gyunhur 

 

Placeness - is also on my mind. I want to revisit Miwon Kwon's One Place After Another.  I will do a post about her writings and thoughts on placeness and site-specificity, which will become essential in developing my conceptual approach to the Lenox project with FLUX in March. Here is great a quote regarding issues of an individual's contextualized identity in community/place. http://www4.ncsu.edu/~sttwn/vzc.htm

How is it possible to throw light on individual and community fragmentation: of the loss of the traditional definitions of identity, community/"place" and "site"? How do we frame our identity, whether as the exoticized subjects of the community where site-specific art is created, or as the exoticized persona of the interventionist artist, and who is left out?

Korean journalist Ms. Kim called me this morning to ask me about my artist talk at the Hudgens this Saturday. She asked me what I would be presenting during the talk and if it would be all right for Korean speaking audience to come. I said, "of course!" To her question, "what would you like for people to get out of your talk?" I mentioned how I would like Korean immigrants like my parents and myself to have an opened mind and curiosity about contemporary art. They should not feel intimated or distant just because it is unfamiliar. Ultimately, where my art stems from isn't too different from their life stories. I hope they can somehow relate to my story and artwork.


* * *
Lenox project is coming up in a few weeks.  I had a meeting with FLUX and Lloyd (Get This! Gallery director) and I am getting excited about this ambitious project. There will be a lot of logistics to figure out, but it's an incredible challenge and opportunity for me. I will be posting about 'volunteering' and 'installation process,' so stay tune.

FLUX projects are funding a few more artist projects this year. To check out more about their projects, go to http://www.fluxprojects.org/projects.html.

To Do List for me this weekend:

Friday, Jan. 21, 2011

The Museum of the Contemporary Art of Georgia

Movers & Shakers: MOCA GA Salutes the Rising Stars of the Georgia Arts Scene

Exhibition Dates: January 22 - March 19, 2011

Opening reception: 6:30-7:30pm

 

Saturday, Jan. 22, 2011

The Hudgens Center for the Arts

Artist Talk at 11AM
For direction, go to http://thehudgens.org/?page_id

Get This! Gallery

Life Iconic

Print show curated by: Jiha Moon
January 22 - March 05, 2011
Opening reception: 7-10pm

Rich Theater, Woodruff Art Center

Iranian Film Today

Women Without Men

8 pm / To buy tickets, go to

http://www.high.org/main.taf?p=4,3,2&eventId=742&eventTypeId=8

   

Maybe I will see you around this weekend! Just don't judge me if you see dark circles under my eyes and say 'hi.' -_-;

- G.

Best of 2010

So I'm running a bit behind on this posting, but there is no shame!
Here is a list of my best experiences of 2010 (although my selections are quite limited and biased!) and next post will be about a few things I am looking forward to in 2011.

Best of 2010

1. Get This! Gallery and the Hudgens

My first solo show Repose with Get This! Gallery opened up an array of opportunities for me as a young artist. Lloyd has become a great partner as well as a mentor in my career, and of course, the Hudgens brought so much resources and support for my work. Working in both spaces was incredible. Looking forward to working with them in upcoming months and years!

Repose installation in progress, Get This! Gallery

She Prays Happiness installation in progress, The Hudgens Center for the Arts

2. Ox-Bow Artist-in-Residence Program

It rocked! I met an amazing group of artists who were inspiring, genuine, and fun. Michigan Lake was beautiful and swimming and biking around in a beautiful, small Michigan town made me healthier. I will not forget our crazy dance parties, critiques, FOOD and DESSERTS (oh goodness...), fire pit nights, and some of exciting works I did up there. You can apply to its artist residency for summer and fall. Check out http://www.ox-bow.org/experience/residencies/artist-residencies. Deadline May 14, 2011 for fall residency.

3. Itzhack Perlman's Mozart and Dvořák

Itzhack Perlman

Perlman conducted and played a trio of jewels by Mozart and Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony at the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in November 2010. It was the best classical music concert I've been to (I haven't been to many yet) and I now have gained a new appreciation towards classical music concert. Perlman's way of conducting, his violin playing, and DVOŘÁK: Symphony No. 9 oboe playing... I'll never forget. The audience clapped for about 20 minutes, still in awe of its performance, not wanting to leave. Inspirations come from so many different things... as I was watching the orchestra executing such an intricate music in layers, I was moved in indescribable ways and was led to think about scales and process of my work as well.
To check out upcoming Atlanta Symphony Orchestra concerts in 2011, go to http://www.atlantasymphony.org/Calendar.aspx.

4. The Hysterial Alphabet performance at Emory

Out of art happenings I attended this past year, this performance piece was one that I could chew on the most and felt a strange stir in me afterward. Out of curiosity and spontaneity, I went and I am so glad I went to go see it (I think there is a necessary urgency and a need to have a gut to follow that instinct.). Terri Kapsali's interpretation of women in hysteria was strangely beautiful and captivating. To read more about its performance, go to http://www.burnaway.org/2010/10/theater-oobleck-offers-a-visual-history-of-female-hysteria-at-emory/.

5. Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present at MoMA

No, I did not get to see her performance and re-performance pieces. Yet this ambitious scale of Marina Abramovic's performance retrospective at MoMA stirred so many discussions about performance art in general. Everyone was talking about it. It 'legitimized' existence of performing bodies within white walls of art institution by having MoMA hosting such a retrospective of Abramovic's works. And I believe people are able to understand and reference performance art in a better context. Even at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, we talked about her performance over dinner; "you are from NYC? Did you get to see Marina's performance then?" "Oh, yes... it was so amazing." Such a stir trickled down to Atlanta as well. Atlanta Contemporary Art Center held a video screening of Marina Abramovic's 7 Easy Pieces and its Artistic Director Stuart Horodner facilitated a wonderful discussion about aura of performance, its identity within art institution, what inspires to do such a piece that tests one's physical limits... Shana Robin's Supernatural Conductor at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center made everyone in Atlanta to be excited about performance art. Along with that wave and excitement, I also did a experimental, 7 hours long performance Thousand Kisses, In My Living Room.

Marina Abramovic, Artist is Present

Shana Robbin, Supernatural Conductor

Gyun Hur, Thousand Kisses, In My Living Room

6. Getting a GPS

I got a GPS from a friend as a gift this year and this is going to change my life! As you know, Atlanta is a driving city, and I would literally print pages to find different galleries, coffee shops, flower shops, and such around the city... maneuvering around the city with pages of paper from google. Oh, I now can listen to "Daniel" and just follow his lead!

Daniel

7. Family and friends

What would I have done without my family and friends this past year? In my preparation of a few installations, my family and friends became so committed with me. I owe them so much. In the midst of difficult times with my health issue earlier this year, family and friends were there to encourage and support me as well. So good to have parents to cut flowers with, a dog I can cuddle with, and friends to hang out with... thank you thank you, everyone.

 

So here comes 2011!!!

- G.

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.

8, 9, 10 - Art in America

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 :

http://www.moussemagazine.it/articolo.mm?id=460

http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/simon_fujiwara/

http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/features/simon-fujiwara/

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.

Good art day -

Tune into WRAS Atlanta Album 88 (88.5 FM) on Saturday morning hours... they play sweet music that would make you wanna hum and take a nice walk.

This morning, I went to the Piedmont Park to do my second week of performance. It was a beautiful day, and Piedmont Park was lively with people jogging, walking, playing football and Frisbee...  I was laying down on my yellow blanket, staring at sky. Some people actually called - one person left me a message saying, "this is a beautiful piece. Thank you for doing this." and I answered one call - we kindly exchanged greetings and told one another to "have a good Saturday."

This Momentary Performance has been a great thing for me to do... I am getting to understand the power of art that permeates in people's daily lives. Without a pressure having to understand what you are seeing, you just encounter that moment of beautiful happening as a 'living picture.' And perhaps, you have a little 'ah-hah' or 'that's cool' moment. I think, art sometimes should not require too much out of audience. A simple response to a piece and a cracking moment of shifting way of seeing and thinking would be just good enough at times.



After the performance, I went to two artist talks at Get This! Gallery and Saltworks.

If you haven't seen Get This! Gallery's current exhibition Free People of Colour (and other pictures), go out there and see it. It is an incredible photography show (it is in conjunction with Atlanta Celebrates Photography). Curator Santiago Mostyn gave an informative talk that helped me to understand the context of the photos further.  I only wish I were a better writer to share with you what I heard and how I felt ... well, I am going to try.

The show is a collection of photographic images by four emerging artists whose interests are in the strong tradition of vernacular photography and "the cultural miasma of the contemporary American south." Images are nostalgic, tender, yet somewhat provocative. And there are certainly historical references of New Orleans black heritage (from Haiti) and a very specific cultural / geographical consciousness of the South (the South that is rather perverse and exotic).

Photographers approach these interesting subject matters with curiosity and empathy. In contrast to contemporary trends of photography in "digital manipulation and constructed abstraction," photographs you will encounter at the exhibit gives a subtle homage to a traditional practice of photographic practice. Seeing these images as non-photographer, I found them inviting and thought-provoking, not distracted by high-definition (HD) manipulation of images which I have grown accustomed to in contemporary photography.

Curator Santiago Mostyn talked about his personal background and where he comes from as a photographer and a curator. His childhood of moving 'so many times' and 'never having home,' he always saw himself as an outsider. Therefore, he gained this curiosity of wanting to understanding other people groups and cultures he encounters... and explores to see if, perhaps, he could find 'home' or a sense of belonging for himself.

I nodded many times during his talk. I especially appreciated his empathetic curiosity of Others and his ability to express them with much respect, which I believe are communicated through his particular aesthetics and concepts.

I just wished... I had enough money to buy one of photographs at the show.

Then I went over to the Saltworks gallery for Iona Rozeal Brown's talk for her current show, Mythologies and Mashups. She had a great energy and openly talked about references and influences of her work. Her paintings were truly the mashups of cultural signifiers of the East and the West (mainly Japan and United States)... and you see these mythological characters who are somewhat familiar.

Did you know about Japanese Blackface culture? Iona Rozeal Brown talked about her experiences with that particular phenomenon in Japan (Japanese darkening their faces and totally obsessed with 'coolness' of blackness and Hip Hop culture - aka Blackfacers). How fascinating - and there are groups of West Africans moving to Japan selling American - Brooklyn - Hip Hop culture to Japanese kids... As an African-American woman artist Brooklyn-based, Iona shouted it out - "that ain't Brooklyn accent! I am from Brooklyn, not them!"


Hah!


Then Jiha Moon engaged with a dialogue... talking about how these twisted fusions of cultures take place in the States as well. You go to a Chinese or Japanese restaurant to find the most authentic food of that culture, but you often find out that the owners are Koreans. Yes yes... I nodded my head again.

And that perhaps is why it is an exciting time for artists... this fluctuation of cultural identity and demographics in globalized, media-based world (OK, that sounded... really corny, forgive me.), we artists are permitted (or do we need a permission?) to create mythologies of our own. What artist Iona did with her paintings is to crack up that space in between two distinctive cultures or conceptions of 'things,' and created her own fantasy and mythology. Yes, in between two lands... it's no man's land, and that is where you can just explore and dare to create the horrendous and beautiful.



Ahh... today was a good art day.

Santiago Mostyn at Get This! Gallery

Iona Rozeal Brown at Saltworks

Momentary Performance, Yukari at whitespace, gallery talks...

"So what are you doing on Saturday at Piedmont Park?" my friend asked me during our lunch break.

"Uhm, it's like... this artist put these scripts together for performers to perform at different locations in Atlanta. He would put something like... 'two girls are eating sandwiches and gossiping about their boyfriends' and you would see exactly that. Mundane moments like that in daily life are actually put in vinyl texts and as you go about your daily routine, you would stumble upon this 'living picture.' Does that make sense...?"

"Sort of."

Exactly.
I often find it challenging, as an artist, to explain conceptual bases of art making and practice to non-artist friends. But I tried, and I think I am getting better at it. And it is important for artists to articulate such matters to general audience. My friends are also getting better at understanding art that is beyond the pictures on the wall and Van Gogh (although I still love his paintings.).


So last week was my first week of Momentary Performance at the Piedmont Park.

Tomorrow, same place and same time. 

Saturdays 11:00 am
Piedmont Park between Oak Hill and Lake Clara Meer

Here are some photos. Some people came to talk to me and I did get some phone calls which I did not answer.

Tonight, my good friend Yukari Umekawa is having an opening reception at the WhiteSpace gallery in Atlanta. I love having artist friends who are not only talented, but also truly genuine and kind-hearted. Yukari is one of them. She studied Photography at the Savannah College of Art and Design and currently resides in Osaka, Japan.

Yukari's ditial pinhole imgaes

And tomorrow, Get This! Gallery and Saltwork Gallery will have gallery talks. Come and check them out. I will be there as well.



Happy Friday, everyone!