STOP, UNRAVEL, ABSORB

LOCATION / KOREA CULTURAL CENTER NEW YORK AND SHANGHAI, SUPERIOR GALLERY SEOUL

PHASE / RESEARCH PROJECT

“Art reflects life. Just as life happens in the relationships between people, art happens between the artist and the viewer.” 

– Michelle Kim, Guest Curator

“The Korean Cultural Center New York presents the 1st Call for Artists 2016 exhibition STOP, UNRAVEL, ABSORB, a group exhibition guest curated by Michelle Eunoak Kim and selected by the Korean Cultural Center New York for the official 'Call for Artists 2016.' The contemporary pieces selected for the exhibition is an aim to reveal the very essence of what art means to the young artists – to observe the world and life that is happening around us, to unravel the complexities of space and time, and to absorb the experience as a whole.

The three words of the title—stop, unravel, and absorb—represent the processes of finding the fundamental meaning of life. The artists, from all different corners of the world, take a moment to think, recognize, and learn what their unique lives mean in order to recreate their experiences through art. In this exhibition, viewers are given a chance to reflect on the contemporary artworks of the eight artists, and are challenged to stop, unravel, and absorb their own lives through art.

The Korean Cultural Center New York’s ‘Call for Artists’ is an annual competition that selects artists to be presented at the Gallery Korea. The Korean Cultural Center commissions internationally renowned art critics and curators as judges to select works of art of artistic excellence without boundaries. This year, the Executive Director of The Armory Show, Benjamin Genocchio, participated as one of the judges at the ‘Call for Artists 2016.’”

- Korea Cultural Center New York

Blurring / Erasing / Expanding Boundary

We conducted a new architectural experiment through exhibitions to communicate with the public and worked on the physical condition of space and environment as architectural installations. Notably, in the ‘NY Contemporary exhibition’ and ‘Stop, Unravel, and Absorb exhibition,’ We redefined the boundary placed between existing context and new place. Through the process of dismantling and reestablishing the everyday objects in the city, we could draw attention to the diverse relationships that can now take place in the new space; we concentrated on wasted objects that encountered on everydayness and reinterpreted them into the architectural installation, lighting fixtures, and furniture.

The ‘NY Contemporary 8 exhibition’ started in Shanghai and introduced to China and Hong Kong, the hubs of the global art market. This exhibition collaborated with a curator, art critics, artists, and architects, based in New York, to present a new paradigm of group exhibitions. The second exhibition was held in New York with the theme ‘Stop, Unravel, Absorb.’ This exhibition was selected by the Korean Cultural Center New York’s ‘Call for Artists’ and presented at the Gallery Korea. The Korean Cultural Center commissioned internationally renowned art critics and curators as judges to select works of art having artistic excellence. In particular, it was highly evaluated by Benjamin Genocchio who is the Executive Director of the Armory Show and the founding editor of Art-Net News, and it unprecedentedly extended exhibitions period. In the same year, this exhibition was also invited to the 'Superior Gallery' in Seoul to exhibit my projects in the title of 'NY Contemporary 8 @ Seoul’. Through the exhibition, we expressed our thoughts experimentally, and communicate with community and public by arousing social issues confronting us.