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Amelia Johnson Contemporary is delighted to
announce, Ironic Mythologies. Featuring three of
Korea’s most active young artists - Dorothy M Yoon,
Hayoung Kim and Hyojin Park, the works have been
carefully selected by London and Seoul based,
independent curator and art consultant Heejin No
Skipwith of Bright Treasure Ltd.
Ironic Mythologies presents three visual languages
created by these talented female artists to convey their
beliefs, fantasies and challenges in order to draw
attention to and even question several social taboos.
Initially, their works overwhelm with their vibrant and
contrasting colours and techniques. These provocative
photographs, stainless steel forms protruding from the
wall and effervescent acrylics on drafting films and
polyester are united by the artists’ shared experiences
and struggles to find their own independent identities
following their departures from a society preoccupied
with perfection and the preservation of traditional
gender roles. Yoon, Park and Kim are all Korean-born graduates of two of the most
prestigious arts colleges in London, U.K. While the artists come from different social and
economic backgrounds, the complexity of their works gives an insight into the difficult
choices they have faced in order to overcome traditional Korean perspectives and
succeed as female artists internationally. The title of the exhibition not only describes their
individual techniques and concepts but also serves as a comment on their personal stories.
Through intense reflection and careful training, each artist has developed their own visual
language as a means to communicate, as well as bridge, the cultural and psychological
gaps between Eastern and Western Idealism.
Yoon explores her fantasies by adopting various guises. In her ‘8 of Heroines’ series, the artist
juxtaposes eight of the Grimm Brothers’ most beloved heroines, with blond hair and oriental
features similar to Yoon’s own, against fantastical, Asian-inspired landscapes recreating her
childhood fantasies and posing thought-provoking questions about societal expectations of
beauty and the pressures that cultural trends place on females today.
Kim’s use of unconventional mediums is innovative and perceptive. Her multi-layered
paintings are created using transparent films and opaque polyester fabric. These plastic-like
surfaces compliment her cartoon-style imagery. In the multi-layered films, her painting represents elapsed time, perspective, and various actions that are then combined into one
harmonious work. In her ‘Eat All You Can’ series, Kim shows us a very vivid picture of how
people in our contemporary society consume too much information; in the form of
advertisements, iconic images and emoticons from various media, and lack the power to
filter and select.
Park’s abstract forms of sculptural figures with painted eyeballs, innocent objects and bright
images comprise her ‘Kpop Venus’ series, which has been derived from her 2010 ‘My Eyes
Beheld the Glory’ series. Rather erotic and organic forms represent traditional notions of
women’s physical and social obligations contrasted and provoked with colourful painterly
patterns of naïve and childish objects. The eyeballs represent gazes of prejudice, jealousy,
happiness and other emotions that women imagine or experience. Park’s version of Venus is
a statement on the new millennium female’s social and notional designations. Historical
Venuses have related contemporaneous thinking on female roles and have been
manifested through different legendary and womanly figures including Venus of Willendorf
and Venus of Milo in the West and statues of Buddhist Bodhisattvas in the East.
:ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES
Dorothy Yoon was born in 1976 in Busan, Korea. She completed her BFA and MFA at Ewha
Women’s University in Seoul Korea in 2001 before completing her second MFA at Goldsmiths
College, University of London, UK. Before graduating from Goldsmiths College in 2007, Yoon
was an active player in the contemporary art scene both in Korea and internationally. While
attending
her
traditional
fine art
course in
Korea at a
time when
the art market was not well conceptualized or understood, her work challenged the
conventional idealism surrounding fine art. Since 2000, she has produced numerous video
projects examining the desires, fantasies and tales that remain at the centre of her life and
work. This mixture of fantasy (she wanted to be a blonde woman as a child) and reality (she
will never be naturally blond) is instantly revealed with little explanation on the surface.
Rather the hybrid of symbolism and metaphors of oriental and occidental traditions and
perceptions of beauty are questioned and analysed behind these superficial glossy scenes.
HaYoung Kim was born in Seoul, South Korea in 1983. She received
her BFA Painting from Hong-ik University, Seoul in 2007 and completed
her MFA at the Royal Academy in London, UK in 2011. Kim describes
her work as looking at humans with a curious gaze, as if through an
endoscope. The artist is interested in the mind and body and a
being's endless desire for perfection - DNA, designer babies,
superhumanity, posthumanism, the primordial soup, and the animality and vegetability of outside and in. HaYoung Kim’s work has been exhibited in the UK, Korea,
China. Japan, France and Scotland and won major prizes including the Jerwood’s Prize for
painting in 2010 and The Dunoyer de Segonzac award in 2011. She also completed
residencies in New York and Scotland.
Hyojin Park, born in 1974 in Andong and grew up in Konju, Souh Korera, recently received
her MFA from Goldsmiths College, University of London. Her work explores the freedom of
artistic choice against the backdrop of the societal pressures a young female faces in
modern-day Korea. After completing her fine
art education in Seoul at Ewha Women’s
University (BFA and MFA) in 2002, Park
married and had three children before her
family allowed her to go to London to pursue
a second Masters degree at Goldsmith’s in
2010. At first glance, Park’s brightly coloured
sculptures appear to be covered in kitsch,
Manga-esque forms such as cherries, toys
and eyeballs. The main shape of the
sculptural body is a form representing her
desire to be free from familial and social
obligations as well as from the prejudices
surrounding women’s physical sacrifices including pregnancy and childrearing. The eyeballs
and other objects represent social, personal and the other ‘gazes’ that we are subjected to
on a daily basis. Park’s works are the ultimate exercise in being provocative but remaining
naïve at the same time.
:ABOUT AMELIA JOHNSON CONTEMPORARY
Founded in 2005 by Amelia Johnson, Amelia Johnson Contemporary has built up an
enviable reputation for presenting carefully curated exhibitions. The gallery is dedicated to
exhibiting groundbreaking international contemporary art in Hong Kong and to promoting
young Hong Kong artists through spotlight exhibitions both in Hong Kong and overseas. The
gallery has participated in many international art fairs, including CIGE (Beijing), Arco
(Madrid), ShContemporary (Shanghai), The Asian Art Fair (New York) Pulse (Miami) and ART
HK (Hong Kong). www.ajc-art.com
: ABOUT BRIGHT TREAUSRE ART PROJECTS
Founded in 2006 by Heejin No Skipwith, BTAP is an art consulting company based in London
and Seoul. It has served master piece research and collection management for high
profiles collectors since its establishment. BTAP also has dedicated its resources to
supporting and promoting emerging artists and new trends through collaborations
internationally. Ms Skipwith has been an active contributor to art magazines and
newspapers and acts as a Project Director of ‘Korean Art: Power of Now’ jointly published
by TransGlobe and Thames & Hudson in 2013. www.b-tap.com
For further details on the exhibition, detailed artist biography & images
please contact the gallery on (852) 2548 2286 or info@ajc-art.com
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