(TENAFLY, NJ) -- Acc gallery presents "Contemporary Art as Reproduction" from November 4-30, 2023. In modern society, these days, anything is born digitally. Art cannot avoid it. In the time when everything is rapidly changing, we want to understand the meaning of traditional prints, from the concept of traditional prints that are fading into our memories, to the current digital prints (it might be the correct expression to say that they are copies) and NFTs.
This special exhibition was designed to give the public an opportunity to see the changing history of printmaking at a glance through this exhibition, presenting works ranging from various techniques of traditional printmaking to digital reproductions using technology. The exhibition includes works by Heejung Cho, Hyejeong Kwon, Kyeongah Min, Namjoo Kim, Haekeung Park, Min K Lee, Jihye Baek, Lisa Jungmin Lee, and Seungyeon Kim.
Embrace, digital printing, 2023
Namjoo Kim - “My painting appears to tell an inner narrative about both the positive and negative facets of the real and imaginary worlds. It the light and color of Paradiso, as depicted in Dante's Divine Comedy, symbolizing divine love and spirituality toward perfect harmony.
“With the emotions of the moment and an unidentified longing, the painting unreservedly unveils them. As the ink glides across the paper, leaving its marks and erasing imperfections, it resembles a play on the sand. Like a child, it embarks on a quest to uncover concealed elements within the clouds.
“Our existence is a collection of paradoxes. I extend an invitation to you to think boundlessly by deciphering through the abstract inner landscape. On the painting's surface, surpassing the bounds of imagination, the viewer uncovers their own interpretations depending on their focus.”
Park, 2023, Oil ink on Korean Rice paper Mono print
Heejung Cho - She capture momental scenes in urban landscape and abstract them by breaking down the structure and perspective with reclaimed wood scraps. She deconstruct and reconstruct personal landmarks into forms and structures of perspective, representing spaces beyond the specific place and time. In the process of dismantling, abstracting, and reproducing both urban structures and human figures from her everyday world, she aim to understand the dynamic energy existing between people and their surrounding spaces.
Her constructive process often begins with the collection of found wood fragments from varying locations, each consisting of a different color, shape, and grain. The unique nature of each wooden scrap reflects the rich diversity of individuals critical to inspiring her creative process. By meticulously situating these singular pieces alongside one another, she is able to recontextualize them into a perspectival landscape, imbuing a sense of purpose and residence to the previously wandering wood. Imprints of these scraps on paper one by one in colors gradually come together to present a 3 dimensional space.
Heejung Cho is a sculptor and printmaking artist born in Seoul, Korea, who currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She received her BFA in sculpture from Seoul National University and an MFA in visual art from the Mason Gross School of the Arts, NJ. Cho has held residencies at the Museum of Arts and Design, the Newark Museum and the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, as well as receiving an AIM Fellowship at the Bronx Museum of Arts and participating in the IAP at the New York Foundation for the Arts. Over the past six years, Cho has also been a Key holder Resident at the Lower East Side Printmaking shop, a SIP Fellow the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop and a resident at the Women’s Studio Workshop in Kingston, NY.
Secret Invitation, Etching on copperplate and printed on Hahnemuhle paper, 20”x 20”, 2022.
Lisa Jungmin Lee - “Before sunrise while everyone is asleep, a city dances and mingles around to reshape their forms and structures without anyone seeing or knowing it. They transform our habitats by inviting a boat and sailor from the sea to Kater street, an ancient column from Athens to Bainbridge street and standing next to the classic brick row house. Once the sun rises, they need to be put back together so that humans can maintain their daily life. It is a city’s secret life during the dawn when everything is stopped.”
Lisa Jungmin Lee is a print-based artist in Philadelphia. Lisa is fascinated by urban structures and its architectural elements she discovers while exploring around the city. Her work incorporates lines as a primary visual language to deliver her interests in blurring the relationship between an image of imagined space and reality.
Lisa received her MFA in printmaking from the Tyler School of Art &Architecture in Philadelphia, PA and a BFA in printmaking from the Hongik University in Seoul, South Korea. She has exhibited her work internationally and received a Wind Fellowship in 2023 through InLiquid Gallery Funded by Dina Wind Art Foundation. Lisa was a recipient of Artist Scholarship at Manhattan Graphics Center. She has participated in Artist-in-Residence programs at Second State Press, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Portside Arts Center, and Officina Stamperia del Notaio. Lisa is currently teaching printmaking and 2D courses at Pratt Institute, Moore College of Art & Design, Tyler School of Art, Rowan University, and Fleisher Art Memorial.
Life-17012, Lenticular, 2018
Park Haekeung - This work projects the ecosystem of creatures living in nature into human life, which is part of nature. In the process, it recognizes the essential natural reason and further examines the inherent philosophy of life.
The description of the modern technology lenticular was applied to the painting work. The essence of lenticular work is based on pictorial characteristics.
The lenticular technique using convex lenses changes the pattern or expresses a three-dimensional feeling according to the viewer's gaze. By combining the fantastic, fun, and three-dimensional properties embodied by the lenticular, it creates synergy to deliver the theme as well as provide an adventurous and special experience to the viewer. The repeated movement of small objects has directionality, forms a huge form, and keeps the whole alive through lenticular techniques. The process of starting with the movement of a small individual and forming the whole is a journey of life that passes through the past and moves to the future through the present.
The sense of liveliness that constantly progresses from an individual as a whole shows the relationship with the huge nature that encompasses all living things. It presents the positive power of all beings, the cycle of life, and the direction toward the future. Here, a message of hope is contained through butterflies orbiting Mother Nature.
Monologue, etching, Aquatint
Hyejeong Kwon - “My work gets a spiritual pleasant sensation by radiating the different kinds of feelings that occur during the process of living at present and desires spurted from the unconsciousness as images. Such series of working action can be a way of managing myself and a process of finding the true self by getting out of the distracting thoughts and fixed ideas that appeared from social action effects by expressing the oppressed emotions extemporarily.
“The characteristics shown on works as the expression of emotion are extremely private and show the autobiographic state by approaching the inner language in metaphorical situation and it is how I communicate with the world through the works by unfolding and showing the residual products of the emotions obtained from my private life. Thus I express myself that is transformed into drawn people, animals or other images and express thoughts that are inherent in the consciousness of me. They are usual emotions such as fears, depression, happiness, sadness and others that are experienced by living the present society, but which are images of the inner world that approach as big problems.”
Min, KyeongAh - “My works focus on reconstructing contrasting images-- from the East and West, old and new, reality and illusion, artificial and natural, and genuine and hypocritical. By carefully constructing such images that have no intrinsic relationship with one another, I evoke a strange and unfamiliar response amidst familiar cues.
“I suggest moving forward to a new phase through conflict and reconciliation between the past and the present, between the East and the West, and artificial and natural.”
She was born in Seoul, South Korea. After graduating from Korea University, she studied fine arts at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts, and obtained Master of Fine Arts degree at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston. During her time in Boston, she was awarded the Robert Brooks Memorial Scholarship Award 1994 at Coply Society of Boston.
In 2013, she obtained her Ph.D. for printmaking at Hongik University in Seoul, South Korea. Following graduation, she taught in the Department of Printmaking at Hongik University as an adjunct professor for three years. Since her debut in 1999, she has held twenty five solo exhibitions.
In 2018, she was announced as The Winner of the ON PAPER International Printmaking Award.
Seungyoun Kim - He was born in Seoul in 1955. He graduated from Hongik University, majoring in Western Painting, and received a Master's degree in Western Painting from Hongik University's Graduate School of Western Painting, and a Master's Degree in Western Painting and Printmaking from the State University of New York, USA.
In 1993, he won the first prize at the Ljubljana International Print Biennale, Slovenia, and afterwards, he received the Sponsor Award, Japan Koji International Print Triennale, Germany Furechen International Print Triennale, the Biennale Sponsor Award, the 98 Slovenia Agat International Print Festival Excellence Award, and the Italian Biella International Print Triennale Grand Prize. Also, 2000 Silver Prize at Tsingtao International Printing Biennale, China; 4th Prize at Japan Koji International Printing Triennale in 2002; 2007 International Printing Prize at Guanlan International Printing Biennale in China; 2007, Edmonton International Printing Art Museum Award in Canada in 2011; and Russian International Mezzotint Festival in 2013. It won the Stival Print Award and the second prize at the 2015 International Print Biennale in Chassel, France.
Kim Seung Yeon also served as president of the Korean Contemporary Printmakers Association and served as a professor of printmaking at Hongik University's College of Fine Arts for several decades.
“Floating”, digital work, 2023
Min K Lee - She is from Seoul, South Korea and currently lives in NYC. She has an M.F.A. in Computer Art from the School of Visual Arts in New York and she has an M.F.A and an B.F.A in Painting, Printmaking in Seoul National University.
She has had six solo shows and has been part of more than 100 group exhibitions. She is the recipient of several awards, including from the Kochi International’s Prints Triennial in Japan, the 10th Korea Grand Arts Exhibition in Seoul, and the Dong-A Fine Arts Festival, also in Seoul.
After many years of working in various media, including printmaking and computer art, Min is now concentrating on painting and digital art.
Min is currently exploring and reinterpreting form and lines observed in nature, finding new ways to experience them.
My Perfume_Sun flower 26x26”, Chromogenic Color Print 2023
Jihye Baek - “Someone once told me that time seems to go by faster as we get older because our memory declines as we age. As I wrestle with this elusive concept of ever-fleeting time and memory, I always question what memories of the present will remain in the future.
“Will I only recollect the pivotal moments of utter happiness or the complete lack thereof? Will most of those seemingly mundane memories of my everyday activities and struggles not be able to stand the test of time?”
Jihye Baek is an artist and photographer born in 1986 in Seoul, South Korea. She received a Bachelor’s Degree from Kingston University in England and a Fine Art Master’s Degree from Pratt Institute in New York, U.S.A. Currently residing in New York, U.S.A, she works on photography and mixed-media on the basis of female psychology and sociology.
Her works are records of accepting life's imperfection and sometimes brokenness. She attempt to reflect the fleeting moments where joy and grief fit together and coexist. Things are not just happiness, and things are not just pain. One cannot calm the storm, but the storm will eventually pass. It was during the pandemic that she was able to savor and embrace the silence, which also came with a pervasive sense of sadness. Maybe that was when she also started paying closer attention to the small and trivial moments in between: those moments of what seemed like an eternity of futile labor, the state of rapture when she felt connected to beautiful things in life, and learning to accept and understand her pain. She want to continue working tirelessly and capturing these ephemeral movements of human souls and the uniqueness of each moment - even if life is not going anywhere but only in circles.
Acc gallery is located at 17-19 Washington St. 2nd fl (CVS Building) in Tenafly, New Jersey. Acc gallery specializes in modern and contemporary art. Acc gallery represents and supports international contemporary artists in painting, drawing, photography, video, sculpture, and installation. The gallery continually seeking for talented and exciting emerging artists to explore and expand the possibilities of their work.
