Being-Body as Incorporeal Tracing and Enfolding-Mind by Tactile Sight: Art Work

Yun Jeong Hong

Project Nomadic Fantasia

WEBSITE: http://www.nomadicfantasia.com/

EXHIBITION:Indi-Go Art Gallery

9 E. University Ave., Champaign, IL 61820

ARTISTS INTERVIEW AND INFORMATION

http://www.nomadicfantasia.com/interviews.php

About the Project

Artists have expanded the discourse of space and time as they have sought to engage with environments. This move questions not only forms of art, but expands the notion of art and the art experience.

In this show, each artist focuses on site and mind specificity though locality, mapping, body, situating, and positioning. My motivation for organizing this project is to explore what defines our memory and identity as individuals when our bodies go through cultural, locational, and physical changes. The chosen artists are exploring site-specific positioning in the form of fictional journeys and/or territorial gestures. The invited artists are Rui Sasaki, Masako Onodera, Motoko Furuhashi, Michael Collins, Liliya Lifanova, and Stephen Cartwright.

The purpose of the exhibition is to bring greater awareness to people about our cultural specificity and locality, which has a unique diversity due to its position as a college town that draws international students and visitors. Another goal is to encourage people to think about what defines us as individuals using art works that focus on cultural specificity, locality, nostalgic gestures, and the body as site. Through daily-based art experiences or by creating fictional objects or situations, the artist participants articulate their different approaches to understanding their identity.

About Curating

I consider the job of a curator as one who is involved in actively seeing and listening to art works during the process of art-making, and not only as one who introduces the works after they are completed and have left the artists' hands. Traditionally, a curator is considered a host and artists are the guests of the curator. In this role, a curator is supposed to suggest a specific direction of understanding the art towards forming discourses. As such, the curator functions as an eye that leads the view.

In contrast to the curatorial role, the artist's in Indra's Net suggest a more interesting journey, one of "netting" between the projects. In this framework I consider myself to be the guest or tracker who is invited to the artist's project to add rhythm, noise, or texture. The title, Indra's Net, is after the mythological character Indra of the Buddhist story (the origin of the character came from Hindu), who uses a net as one of his signature tools. The net is considered a symbol of interconnectedness, and at every vertex there is a jewel and the jewels reflect images of each other. In Korean this net is called jae-mang, and people use this word to describe the unlimited and timeless relationship of everything in the world as denoted by the structure of the net and the reflections of the jewels. I chose this title because I wanted to be a "vertex" connecting these artists that have different relationships with history and with myself. I have been watching their projects and am fascinated by their ideas and attitudes, and by how I reflect myself in their works in order to understand my own interest in the work.

Instead of only showing one project in the exhibition space, I decided to introduce the process of the artists' methodologies through interviews published on the Internet. I consider this necessary because I cannot and should not delineate the starting and ending points of their projects. By showing the process of the each project, I invite audiences to join me in the journey toward the artists’ future projects. This exhibition was planned to further understand how an artist can approach mind/body relationships in art. Instead of struggling with the dogmatic art definitions of site specificity, the artists allowed their works the intimacy and vibration of being a living thing. Like a jewel in Indra's net, these works show how everything exists through the process of reflection. My role has been to pull on the topological net to create a vertex in front of the viewer.

09/05/2011

Yun Jeong Hong

Liliya Lifanova, Project Flying Carpet, CeRCCa (Center for Research and Creativity Casamarlés), Lorrenç del Penedés, April 2011

ACCEPTED KNOWING:PEER REVIEW

July 29, 2011 - August 26, 2011

116 N Walnut
Champaign, IL 61820

http://seefigureone.org/

http://acceptedknowing.wordpress.com/

Curated by Jeanie Austin, Maria Lux,

and Nicki Werner

Artists list

Will Arnold

Sophia Flood

Amy Gilles

Jim Graham

Ben Grosser

Yun Jeong Hong

Micah Jefferson

Jacob Juhl

Pancho Panoptes

Jason Patterson

Anna Peters

Julia Pollack

Laura Tanner

Sarah Beth Woods

Michael Woody

Curator’s statement

Is it possible for information to be neutral? As the manifestation of knowledge, information carries the biases, prejudices, and perspectives of its creator. Even the most apparently impartial information carries value judgements – it speaks to what received attention and whispers quietly about what was not valued or seen as worthy of communication. In addition to this, individuals interpret information in a myriad of ways. Life experience and personal definitions, as well as unconscious motivations, affect how information is incorporated and used to create new ways of understanding the world.

Peer reviews and wikis may reveal where these individualized understandings of information overlap (or are similarly socially constructed). They may lead to a clearer perspective of what is widely accepted to be true. Conversely, the divergences in knowledge may become more apparent through these practices. The jury process for this exhibition mimicked these collective validations of knowledge by allowing applicants to serve as a pool of experts who then collaboratively determined which work would be included through anonymous written reviews. Displaying the review statements alongside the works lends transparency to the overall process and provides insight into the ways that knowledge is constructed. This show at once values and critiques this process, leaving the viewer to wonder what it is, exactly, to know.

Jeanie Austin, Maria Lux, and Nicki Werner

http://acceptedknowing.wordpress.com/2011/07/28/curators-statement/

Mouthing (the Sentient Limb)

July 17 – October 16, 2011

Exhibition Reception: Sunday, July 17, 3-5pm

Curated by Kelly Kaczynski

Works by Cameron Crawford, David Gracie,Rachel Herman, Yun Jeong Hong, Julia Klein, Dani Leventhal, Todd Mattei, Christopher Meerdo,Chris Naka, Erin O’brien, Steve Reinke, Melanie Schiff, and Amy Sillman

David Gracie, Ice Cube, 2011, oil on plywood, 7 ¾” x 6 ¾”

Panel Discussion: Wed, September 21, 5pm.

Virtually Physically Speaking

A discussion of physicality in conventional practices alongside virtual realities and technology media.

Curator’s Talk with the Artists: October 2, 3-5pm.

Gallery 1 and the Jackman Goldwasser Catwalk Gallery

Gallery Hours:

Monday – Thursday: 10am – 8pm

Friday – Saturday: 10am – 5pm

Sunday: 12pm – 5pm

Chicago, IL (April 2011) - Mouthing (the Sentient Limb), a group exhibition curated by Kelly Kaczynski, brings together the work of emerging and established artists Cameron Crawford, David Gracie, Rachel Herman, Yun Jeong Hong, Julia Klein, Dani Leventhal, Todd Mattei, Christopher Meerdo, Chris Naka, Erin O’Brien, Steve Reinke, Melanie Schiff and Amy Sillman at the Hyde Park Art Center from July 17 until October 16, 2011. The selection of sculpture, installation, paintings, drawings, photographs, and video in this exhibition explores a state of awareness or comprehension through the body’s ability to interpret sensation without touching.

The term ‘mouthing’ is used as a symbolic gesture of a silent proclamation. As a title, it represents language that is unspoken through the mouth, which is also used as a site for sensing.

Like vertigo or a phantom limb, the artworks are gathered together in this exhibition to describe a process of perception that is generated from, felt by, or frustrates, the physical body. Through art practices that are both physical and conceptual, the human figure is present either directly or indirectly. While the mediums they use may vary, the exhibition curator, Kelly Kaczynski, asserts, “Each of the artists offers an approach to the body that questions notions of sensuality, spirit, emotion, and cognition in our corporeal state.”

With the increased presence of virtual realities and remote communication in our daily lives, our engagement with physical sensation is less frequent and more limited. In turn, the psychology of physicality is more complicated as it is stretched to include a virtual realm. Mouthing (the Sentient Limb) looks at the ways in which our minds are connected to our bodies by presenting a group of artworks that explores insights relating and returning to physical presence.

Kelly Kaczynski is a sculptor and installation artist residing in Chicago. She is Assistant Professor in the Department of Art Theory and Practice at Northwestern University and has served as a member of the Hyde Park Art Center’s Exhibition Committee since 2008. Mouthing (the Sentient Limb) is Kaczynski’s first curatorial project.

Mouthing (the Sentient Limb) will be on view from July 17 to October 16, 2011, in Gallery 1 and the Jackman Goldwasser Catwalk Gallery at the Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 South Cornell Avenue, Chicago, IL, 60615; 773.324.5520 and www.hydeparkart.org. Exhibitions are always free and open to the public.

The Hyde Park Art Center is a not-for-profit organization that presents innovative exhibitions; primarily work by Chicago-area artists, and educational programs in the visual arts for children and adults of diverse backgrounds. The Center is funded in part by the Alphawood Foundation; The Chicago Community Trust; a City Arts III grant from the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and the Illinois Arts Council; The Lloyd A. Fry Foundation; The Leo S. Guthman Fund; The Irving Harris Foundation; The Illinois Arts Council, a state agency; The Joyce Foundation; JPMorgan Chase Foundation; The Mayer & Morris Kaplan Family Foundation; The MacArthur Foundation; The MacArthur Fund for Arts and Culture at Prince; The Orbit Fund; Polk Bros. Foundation; The Clinton Family Fund; The Sara Lee Foundation; South East Chicago Commission; The Wallace Foundation; and the generosity of its members and friends.

Sant Jordi 2011

An exhibition of the work of artists residents at CeRCCa,
Center for Research and Creativity Casamarles.

Yun Jeong Hong
Liliya Lifanova
Vivek Chockalingam

Opening: Saturday 23rd April at 8h.
Exhibition: from 23rd April to 7th May 2011.
Place: Espai d’Art Les Quintanes, Llorenc del Penedes.

After the exhibitions of the artists in residence at CeRCCa in 2010, the center and L’Espai d’Art Les Quintanes continue their collaboration by offering the public presentation of the first residents of 2011: Yun Jeong Hong, Liliya Lifanova and Vivek Chockalingam.

In the exhibition, 'En prueba del carino que les profesa su hijo, les dedica su foto en prueba del carino que les profesa’, the work of artist Yun Jeong Hong, an artist originally came from Korea, and working and living in Illinois, proposes a labyrinthical pathway through memory from everyday objects. The installation consists of object collation and study pieces in which Yun Jeong Hong expresses her interest towards the object as a container of experiences. Playing between reality and fiction, the artist has used wool, textiles and domestic objects transforming them into a materialized immobile landscape through the obsessive and omnipresent use of cement as a unifying element. Memories, framed in the structure of a bed aged by time, breathe powerlessly, stuffed and heavy. The monumental sculpture is accompanied by collection pieces of subtle and disturbing nature that work as laborious transformations of traces of fictitious pasts by using delicate materials such as glass, copper, weaved textile and old photographs. The installation is framed by the projection of a written text that appears on the back of one of the photos. This text, which in itself is rhetoric and absurd, gives the perfect title to the whole work.

The art practice of Liliya Lifanova (American, born Kyrgyzstan), on the contrary, emanates a feeling of impermanence and fantasy. 'The Flying Carpet Project' is the result of a collaboration between the artist, the 5th grade students of the School Les Cometes de Llorenç del Penedes, and a group of local stitchers. Inspired by the myths and the nomadic traditions of her native Kyrgyzstan, the artist held a workshop where the children were involved in the creation of a felt carpet. However, the workshop was not merely a didactic activity but an experience where the children disclosed to the artist the location of their magical, real and imaginary places at Cal Figueres and its environments, the farmhouse where the workshop was held. Through careful production (costumes, props and staging), Liliya Lifanova created a dream like, magic scenario, where the children were urged to access their inner wizards so as to imbue their work with magic. The felt pieces made by the children were then sewn together, by a group of women from the village, to create a flying carpet. In The espai d’Art Les Quintana you will have the possibility to contemplate the precious object and see a selection of edited material filmed during the workshop. Along with 'The Flying Carpet Project' Liliya Lifanova presents ‘Untitled (Newspapers from January-March 2011 Robert family Llorenç del Penedes)’ a work based on meditative repetition. It comprises over 5000 pieces made with newspapers that the family Robert accumulated in their home between January and March 2011. The result is a spectacular landscape-archive where the patient, dedicated and healing action of the artist is reflected. In contrast to the work of Yun Jeong Hong, Liliya Lifanova’s use of wool and newspaper is not as much a repository of memories but the raw material from where to create a dream world based on nomadic impermanence as the condition of the artist.

The work of an artist and designer Vivek Chockalingam from Bangalor (India), 'Ojala' rest in an intermediate indefinite state between these two proposals. This uncertainty is present not only in his methodology which is going through between different creative disciplines, but also regarding the materials used and the concept of the piece. The origin of the expression 'Ojala', a Castilianism of common use in our country is interpreted by Vivek Chockalingam through the concept ‘Insa Allaah’ an expression popularly used in countries of the Arab world that could be translated as 'If God wills'. This concept is defined by the artist as ‘used when something intended to be done in the future, but not as a certainty but as an uncertainty. That is: beauty lies in the acceptance that nothing is certain and whatever ultimately happens is the way for you to find truth and happiness’. These areas of uncertainty and emptiness are understood by the artists as unique opportunities to undertake new challenges. Vivek Chockalingam has been inspired by this concept to create a multifunctional and ambiguous structure that reflects upon the possibility to become something that is located in between to be functional, nor not to be. The desire of change and impermanence, the will to be differently playing with the dualism of the concepts of Yun Hong Jeong and Liliya Lifanova: the tendency of the historicist immobility through memory, and the longing for change and transformation. 'Ojala' rest then in a state of transitoryness, emphasizing this stage as precondition to create a space for creativity with practical realization. By transforming chairs’ given for granted utility, Vivek Chockalingam creates then a cosmology of possibilities and impossibilities, a dualism that runs through the works of the exhibition. We would be glad if you could visit to reflect upon and enjoy this art practices of the artist visiting Casamarles as artist residency of March and April, 2011.

- written by Pau Cata, CeRCCa