MAYA 1300

MAYA Solo Exhibition featuring Seung Mo Park 
March 8 - April 7, 2012 Opening Reception: Thursday, March 8, 6 - 8 pm 
 
BLANK SPACE is pleased to present a solo exhibition titled MAYA (generally meaning "illusion" in Sanskrit) featuring selected works of Seung Mo Park. Maya is the third phase in a trajectory of Park's conceptual works dealing with reality, illusion, and existence. Barely possessing materiality of sculpture, or the ideas within them, the idea and conceptualization of MAYA is far from tangible substances.

As part of this third phase of Park's work, he has chosen to work with images of illusion rather than materiality and the results are refreshing. He is faithful to this idea of maya and the truth of people's lives, in his way examining whether our lives are a dream or reality. Further, by naming these works all MAYA followed by a number creates an almost anonymous identity to these women who represent the woman from the artist's dream, therefore giving another example of maya  in these works.

The nascent spark for this new phase of reality vs. dream may be attributed to a dream Park had. In this dream, he met a woman and awoke soon afterwards, confused if the dream was reality or reality was a dream. In fact, he wasn't sure if he hadn't been the subject of the dream for the woman. In order to bring this concept to light, Park held a casting call to find models that looked like the woman in his dream. As he photographed, he worked through a contradiction by asking the model to act the opposite of how things appeared in his dream. This is why the MAYA series women look so sorrowful, as if she had just woken from her dream. In particular, this look of sorrow is both striking and breathtaking in MAYA 7616 and slightly different but equally compelling in MAYA 762 and MAYA 1618.

With his new methodology and process, Park overlaps several layers of steel mesh and rotates them slightly so they are slightly out of line with one another -- leaving a space about two finger widths between. He then sketches the contours of the images of his models on steel meshes and cuts them out, creating a three-dimensionality in these contours. Depending on the viewer's standpoint, the images may look transparent, illusory, or shadowy.

Print Bicycle 2010 Fiberglass, mold, aluminum wire (unique) 150(L) x 74(W) x 95(H) cm

Seung Mo Park

Soft Crash/ aluminum, piezo, arduino / 330x330x165(d) cm / 2011



One of the defining characteristics of Baroque music is the basso continuo. In rock music, the basso continuo -- as represented by the bass guitar -- does not reveal its distinctive tones, drowned out as they are by drums and electric guitars. However, it does serve to add a sense of tension to the piece as a whole. Without that ever-present basso continuo, like the sound of a beating heart, the tension present in Baroque music would never have come to be. Though the basso continuo is nearly imperceptible, the beat of Baroque music owes itself to that sound. This is similar to the style of Tenebrism in Baroque painting. This style is characterized by a powerful contrast between light and dark on the canvas, as seen in the works of Caravaggio. By themselves, the dark backgrounds in Baroque painting may be meaningless to us, not representing any obvious object of perception, but they constitute an unconscious foundation that generates a dramatic sense of tension in the canvas as a whole. In other words, minute elements that are not directly perceived by the consciousness function to create a feeling of artistic tension.



Subsequent Events/ brass, piezo, arduino / 160x300x190(h) cm / 2012

The work of Kim Byoung-ho represents a process of creating a fantasy out of these minute perceptions. Kim gathers very tiny elements, imperceptible to the eye like viruses, and groups them together to create highly sophisticated forms. At first glance, the resulting shapes resemble the kind of ordinary objects and structures that we encounter on a daily basis. But Kim's works possess a tension within them that cannot be found in ordinary objects or simple structures. Like the sound of the basso continuo, microscopic viruses are endlessly bursting forth. Expressed in visual terms, they are like tiny bits of pollen flying through the air. It is for this reason that Kim's works are not simply objects, but fantasies. If they were simply objects, not only would there be no tension present, but no fantasy would take shape either. Fantasy must by necessity carry with it a relationship of tension with reality or the object. - Park Young Wook

Byung Ho Kim

Lives and Works in Seoul Korea
Jaeseon Moon is a performance artist, and the founder anddirector of the performance arts organization SORO.

He majored in Visual Arts, and worked as an actor, a scenographer invarious theatre and dance productions. The credits include the productions bythe Theater ETAT, Theater Company Ggipan, and Korea Performance Art Sprit(KOPAS). He also created solo performance pieces, ‘Adagios’ (1999), 'TheVibration and Unforming Circle'(2000), 'Dust'(2002), 'The Old Vibration'(2005)in which he translated autobiographical and socio-political issues into thecorporeal visual languages. Since he founded SORO Performance Unit in 2004, hehas contributed to raise the profile of Korean performance arts in and out ofthe country by organizing festival PAN ASIA in Seoul.  

Moon employs sensory languages in his performances. He has beenexperimenting with various methodologies to bring immanent sensations intopresence. He approaches the inner human through gazing into the physical body.Moon strives to recompose the inner and outer movements of body to create a newdynamics of materiality, visuals, and soundscapes in his performances. His hasbeen influenced by various disciplines such as bioscience, arts therapy,contemporary dance, visual arts, and sound arts and has collaborated withartists and professionals in the practice in creating performances 'LeDeux'(2007) and 'Pacato'(2009).



This is a long artistic process that promotes lovefor humanity by visiting the places of sad memorialsof human kind.“The Pacato” expresses sadnessresonatingin history, the weeping of inerasable past. It is asilent prayerfor peace of humankind, and restoration of human will for better future.

At the time of terrorism and the wars in the Middle East and Africa,the performance consoles the souls perished in the past wars to express thehuman wishes for human. There is heartrending DMZ(DemilitarizedZone)set between north and south Koreas after Korean War. Although WorldWar 2 ended long ago, there are still many victims ofthe atomic bomb in Hiroshma, Nagasaki, Krakow and even in Korea,and the world is not exempt from its responsibility.

As a pilgrimage to the places of violence, ‘the Pacato’ was performed and documentedat Taepung Oversation Platform, which issituated near Imjin River flowing across the border of two Koreas. InHiroshima, I recorded my performance at some places of the memory of victims of the atomic bomb, such as Hiroshima Peace Memorialand Genbaku dome. I visited Auschwitz State Museum in Poland, and made a visual documentary of performances about the Wall of Death, and monuments forthe victims.

This performance expresses nomadism that seeks for the continuous vibration from past to present of mankind. Through performance, installation, andsound, theartist attempts to show a process, in which arts pursue active andpositive aspects in thesociety

“BANISHMENT I, II, III, IV, V” 91 X 116 CM X 5 PIECES ACRYLIC AND SCREEN INK ON CANVAS 2011



Psychedelic art and traditional Asian art are two forms of expression that attract vastly different crowds, but Casper Kang has managed to fuse the two styles together to create something inventive yet familiar.



Littered throughout these illustrations are motifs, such as clouds, snake scales and floral designs, that you’d expect to see from images originating from China, Korea or Japan. The way Kang pieces these elements together, however, is highly evocative of poster art you’d expect to see during the late 1960s, when psychedelic imagery reigned supreme.



“DDD” 390 X 160 CM ACRYLIC & INTERFERENCE & SCREEN INK ON CANVAS 2009

Casper Kang was born in Toronto, Canada and after completing his B.A.S. at Carleton University, he moved to Seoul, South Korea. Feeling disillusioned by society, and also due to his affinity towards art since childhood, he quit his job to pursue a career as a painter, which he hopes to maintain until his death.

Inspired by modern social conditions, the visual forms and subject matter of his work draw from such outlets as popular culture, materialism, cultural identity, and capitalism. Asterisks frequently appear in most of his works, as both his signature and logo. Symbolizing that which is “special”, and emphasizing the sentimental quality of “apathetic personal interpretation” in modern society; the notion of grey, as in the absence of black and white, the dissolution of morality and liking or disliking something for no particular reason. As an asterisk is used to signify something of importance in a text, Casper Kang’s asterisk paintings, when hung in a certain space, announce that that particular space is “special”. Casper Kang currently resides and works in Seoul.

Casper Kang

Fragile-Flow Blue, Digital Print, 82.7”x47” in., 2010

Fragile is the second solo exhibition of Korean artist Kim Joon (b. 1966) at Sundaram Tagore New York. The show is a variation on the emerging photographer’s fascination with tattoos and taboos. His use of three-dimensional computer graphics enables Joon to ‘virtually’ mould the physiology of his subjects in an anti-pygmalian fashion.



Fragile-mermaid, Digital Print, 90cm x 54cm, 2010

The artist, then, imprints (tattoos) his imperfect bodies and figur(in)es with iconic imagery of contemporary luxury-brands or historic mass-produced Chinoiserie patterns that signify their mediated aesthetics. The Seoul-born Joon has explained his interest in tattoos “as a metaphor for hidden desire or a kind of compulsion engraved into human consciousness. Tattoos can reflect individual and collective reality or displaced desire.”

Cradle Song – Ferragamo, Digital print, 2009

Joon’s recent adaptation of blue and white Chinese porcelain ware design is at once an ode to, and a criticism of, the stunning eminence of Asia as a rising financial, political and cultural power. Dating back to as early as the 9th century, the techniques of hand-painted pottery had fully evolved toward, and were cultivated for, mass-production, by the 14th century.

At the height of the Industrial Age, this ‘fragile’ creation had manifested itself into the most imitable of Orientalia from Iznik to Delft and Staffordshire. Joon’s deceptively decorative images thus betray just how little things have changed: the continuous and growingly dynamic Seidenstraße (Silk Road) trade; import of raw material from neighboring countries (cobalt from Persia/Iran); advancement of Chinese technologies; and, the expanding import/export market for luxury as well as mass-produced goods.