Representing Artists 

Koo Seongyoun (b.1969)
Koo Seongyoun is renowned for her still life photography reorganizing her imagination with objects in our ordinary life. Her ‘Peony’ reborn as sweet candies of different shapes and colors will attract audience’s attention. Her photography is beloved by many through various art fairs and art galleries in and out of Korea. In her most recent series on candies that began in 2009, she first took the image of Paeonia, one of the popular subject matters in traditional painting for Paeonia often symbolizes feminine virtue and gracefulness, no less without the hope for materialistic prosperity. In Korean tradition,  Paeonia was usually given by a mother to daughter to show mother’s ever-lasting love toward daughter. But Koo’s contemporary interpretation of Paeonia photographs comprised of candies full of sugars and sometimes artificial coloring may seem to pose questions about mother’s dream throughout generations as mother’s hope as rendered in Paeonia might be as fragile as candies and pop corns, particularly under Confucianism.  

Wonsook Kim (b.1953)
After attending Hong-Ik University for 2 years, Wonsook Kim went to the U.S. to attend and graduate the University of Illinois. Her paintings suggest intimacy, simplicity, and secrecy as if writing a diary or soliloquy. Due to this simplistic nature, complexity and pedantic elements of contemporary arts cannot be found in her works. Rather, her own experience of love is portrayed in her works in this exhibition, poetically embodying love like a fairytale. The artist’s vision of happiness is depicted in her small canvases, fully representing sense of nostalgia as well as love and lingering imagery. Her sophisticated style in communion with seemingly insignificant daily subject matters will be a unique and touching experience.

Chonghak Kim (b.1937)
Kim Chonghak is the forerunner of contemporary Korean art. Focusing on depicting the landscapes of Sul-Ak Mountain, Kim Chonghak offers us in this exhibition the mountain’s scenery in all four seasons of a year.  His paintings can be characterized as “abstract-conception.” The portrayals of grass, rocks and trees are recognizable in their forms, but the absence of details on the other side strongly implies the abstract nature of his works. Although his paintings are stylistically western, the nonexistence of perspective resembles folk arts. Kim Chonghak has been painting the Sul-Ak Mountain for over 20 years, depicting landscape, bugs, waterfalls, and flowers with primal and vivid colors. He is called the “the painter of Sul-Ak” because he paints the mountain as he sees it, not as how everyone sees it. In other words, he paints the subject in his impression and perception, expressing his inner-self though the paintings. As exemplified in his notion of a painter as one who paints to free himself, Kim Chonghak presents vibrant, liberating, and dynamic art pieces. His love of nature can also be found in his personal collection of traditional wooden furniture. 

Park Kwangsung (b.1962) 
“To have and To be – Between” by Park Kwangsung
I do not paint to convey my stories but paint for communication with the world. The public want artists to represent issues and messages in an interesting manner. Artists work to meet public demand, exquisitely representing such things. Artists seriously consider Jean Paul Sartre’s existentialism, or praise Immanuel Kant’s decadence, advocating humanistic, liberal artistic thinking. 
My 2011 solo show in Germany was a turning point. The title was To have and to be – between. Here, ‘between’ means ‘emotion’, connoting ‘free will’. The black of a landscape is depicted like a background in a romanticist painting. A face with the closed eyes is portrayed with the face with open eyes. The body is also depicted as a background with a landscape. Focusing on visible elements in 21st century painting, my work regards romantic emotion of the mid-18th century. 
With my free will as light as feather I say, "My painting is more beautiful than my life!”
(Jan. 2012)

Im Changwook (b.1984) 

Zu Doyang (b.1976)
Zu’s photographs present the world in a two-dimensional circle. He gets many photographic images through a 360-degree revolution of the camera, and combines and composes them into one photo. His photographs look like a distortion of the real. He unfolds a strange world distant from the reality he began with. However, his photographs make us realize that his multi-faceted imagery is a realistic appearance of reality. 
 He photographs familiar urban scenes which have little significance, but the position the subject views them from is confusing. In his work the subject does not see the world: to the contrary, the object or the world sees the subject, taking photographs. His photographs implicitly incapacitate the artist’s subjective position of controlling a work and dominating the world. 

Choi Insun (b.1964)
What Choi attempted to explore during the ‘ Period of properties’ and ‘Period of Signs’ was to inquire him of the painterly terms as materials and the painterly terms as icons / letters. The former inquiry had an emphasis on determining the boundary of painting itself by defining the material limit of a plane, whereas the latter had an intent of redefining painting among ‘ the others’ Which was a departure from the boundary of materials. Having the first inquiry as his starting point and the latter as his first turning-point, Choi has come to this present point. The essence of his two previous was in defining the boundaries of the ‘inside’ and the ‘outside’ of paintings respectively.

Arman (1928-2005)

Jude Tallichet (b.1954) 
Jude Tallichet lives and works in Queens, NY. She is represented by Sara Meltzer Gallery in New York City, where she has had six solo exhibitions since 2000 .She has exhibited nationally and internationally in venues such as the Konsthallen in Gothenburg, Sweden, The Shanghai Biennial in China, The Busan Biennial in Korea, The Tirana Biennial in Albania, the “Officina America” exhibition in Bologna, Italy, and at Periogi Gallery in Liepzig, Germany. She participated in the inaugural Greater New York Show at PS1 MOMA, the “Treble” exhibition at Sculpture Center, and the “Brooklyn Next” exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. ?She has had solo shows at the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum and the Burnet Gallery in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She was a featured performer in the Iron Artist Event at PS 1 MOMA, organized by Cabinet Magazine. Jude spent a year in Brazil as a Senior Fullbright Fellow in 1996 and has received fellowship grants in sculpture from the National Endowment for the Arts (1990) and from the New York Foundation for the Arts. (2001) She has received residencies at the MacDowell Colony, the Millay Colony and at the Civitella Ranieri Center in Umbertide, Italy. She is Professor and chair of the Sculpture Department at the Tyler School of Art, where she has taught since 1987. Jude was a founding member of the rock band Ultra Vulva and has collaborated on video and performance projects with a diverse collection of artists and musicians, including Jeanine Antoni, Kristin Lucas, Doug Henderson, John Harbison and Henry Threadgill.

Mark Khaisman (b. 1958)
The work of art in relation to its context has become a subject of interest for me. In my “Patterns” series, I am exploring the emotional and intellectual perception of ages taken out of context and then placed in direct relation to its original context. I am creating beautiful patterns out of photographs of disasters and tragedies, natural and handmade. Without revealing the course of the images, the viewer is enjoying intricate ornaments. Revealing the image's source adds to this pleasurable emotion other turbulent emotions: confusion and disturbance.

Paul Rousso (b.1958)
'Soon there will be no new magazines, no newspapers, no new books, everyone will have their reader, iPad etc., to which they can download whatever they want, whenever they want, where ever they are. The last paper and ink to go away will likely be our paper currency. Perhaps the audience for my work is only just being born.'
Pop culture and its inherent, conflicting sensibilities takes on hyper-size in Paul Rousso's 'document' works. Reaching dimensions of up to 4 by 5 feet, Rousso plays on the ironic act of 'discarding' elements such as money and magazine pages; their disheveled appearances belie their significance in the world at large, yet they are somehow perceived as less important thanks to a simple, effortless gesture. For all of the production value and manpower that is exerted in creating dollar bills and glossy magazine folds, Rousso's satire lies in inflating their size to inescapable proportions while maintaining their 'used' states. Use implies the object becoming useless, while the 'new' is a fantasy.
Paul Rousso began his studies at the Cleveland Institute of Art and went on to receive his BFA from the California College of Arts & Crafts in 1981. Rousso's practical experience in visual art was kick-started with stints as an Art Director and freelance illustrator for Revlon, Clairol, Condé Nast and Bloomingdale's. He was commissioned as part of an interior designer team for the home of Robert De Niro and The El Morocco. He was commissioned for a special project for the Time Warner Cable Arena in Charlotte. His work has been exhibited in galleries in Atlanta, Charlotte, Los Angeles, New Orleans and Miami. Rousso lives and works in Charlotte. 

[Artist Statement] The Object as Paint

To me it seems quite logical that eventually in the progression of art, someone would do away with the illusion of three-dimensional space and paint the mountain in the background exactly as the tree in the foreground. Cezanne's work at the time was quite shocking for the viewer of his art, as they had never seen anything like it before.
This is what I refer to as the “flattening”.  For me, this is why Cezanne has been called the father of modern art. He painted his landscapes and still-lives as if everything was on the surface of the canvas. A more truthful expression of the subject matter as the surface of the canvas is two-dimensional.
Logically Matisse came along and then Braque and Picasso.
Certainly a lot can be said about these artists, their work and who they influenced, but suffice it to say, the “flattening” continued on in earnest.
This art begat that, and that art begat this.
And in response they did this,which influenced that,etc., so on and so forth.
20th century painting is replete with examples of this underlying concept. Many new things started to happen in art exponentially, abstraction came along in all of its many forms, as did so many other directions in art.
Another common theme that I believe ties all this figurative work together is that the artist is doing a painting of something.
If the artist is not doing a painting of something that is in and of our world it is very likely that this painting is an abstract painting.
It is unto its self, its own image, not of anything other than what the artist created.
These are the two sides of the coin in painting. The figurative and the abstract.
There are many shades from one end of the spectrum to the other, but everything has an opposite.
I have always searched for what would be the appropriate and direct response to 20th century painting.
How could one respond to the “flattening” and somehow invert it the way, for instance, cubism inverted the realism that came before it?
My work is about finding what comes next.
I started with a “still life of the Bible”.
I applied/sculpted each page in order, from the first page to the last, onto a thirty by eighty inch wood panel.
It isn’t of the Bible. It is the Bible;
it is, the perfect still life.
The medium and the subject have become one.
The three dimensional object was applied in order and completely intact, two dimensionally.
It is total realism and total abstraction.
After a year of thinking about it, I began producing one after the other.
The selection process is ever changing but as of late, the most intense part of the process.
After “choosing” the Bible I stopped thinking and just did what ever fell in front of me. I would get up from the table after reading my Sunday Times and "do it." Someone would hand me a magazine and I would "do it." A friend one day handed me a book about one of my favourite artists. You get the picture. Soon, that serendipitous method gave way to recognizing what would look fabulous, which than gave way to what would be personally hard for me to part with. Things, for one reason or another, I have schlepped around for as much as thirty years.
All of these important documents to me for one reason or another were now the subject of most of my new work; it was a lot of paper and ink.
My latest works involve any and all documents. They are created ascetically and without regard to specific documents. The subject is the paper,
and the paper is the paint. I always felt it was more like painting than doing a collage. Different papers and inks do different things, and in that I have found a new language. My voice as it were. 
That which brought us out of the dark ages, the printed word, which also began with the Bible on Guttenberg’s press is definitely in its final death knell. After hundreds of years of the printed word, ink on paper, is on it’s way out.
Soon there will be no new magazines, no newspapers, no new books, everyone will have their reader, I-pad etc., to which they can download whatever they want, whenever they want, where ever they are. The last paper and ink to go away will likely be our paper currency.
Perhaps the audience for my work is only just being born.

Paul Rousso 2011