Raggedy Ann's Foot

Sunday, May 20, 2018

China, Two Perspectives: Sook Jin Jo and Yun Fei Ji

Sook Jin Jo's China Black at Black & White Gallery April 6 - May 13, 2018. Gallery Link
Art Historian Margaret Richardson writes, "

Pairing the fluidity and transparency of ink drips and washes with the hard, used wooden boards provides an apt visualization of the contradictions of modern China, where the new is quickly displacing the old. As China has raced to modernize its cities, old wooden historic areas have been razed and wiped away with little trace, with futuristic skyscrapers left looming in their place. The organic and the natural are further obscured and degraded by the terrible pollution that adds a tangible weight to the air. The assemblages in "Shanghai Black" make that pollution and lost past palpable."

Here, Margaret Richardson with Carol Salmanson at the opening reception for Shanghai Black.

These works were created in Shanghai in 2014, when Sook Jin Jo was in residence at Swatch Art Peace Hotel. I was her studio neighbor and witnessed these works develop. How succinctly they capture the multiple construction sites near the residency, displacing compounds developed over many years for luxury housing.

The link above provides images of many of these works revealing urban transition through the materials we most frequently experience them: walls of wood and ephemeral ink. For more about Jo visit her website: Sook Jin Jo Website

Yun Fei Ji at James Cohan's Grand Street LES location in Rumours, Ridicules and Retributions through June 2018.
Gallery Link

This is his first show in a while, which shows a solidity of structure revealing sources in scroll painting and Italian shards, perhaps, from the 2006 Rome Prize period. Ji remains true to stories of misplaced residents of small rural villages in the wake of political and urban changes.

In addition to various paper works Ji created a scroll.

Detail

The scroll in its entirety. For more information on Ji's work and concerns read an interview with Lilly Wei here: Lilly Wei and Yun Fei Ji interview

The Elegance of Reduction: Cyrilla Mozenter at Five Myles, Brooklyn

Cyrilla Mozenter's Failed Utopian and Other Stories at Five Myles, Brooklyn (closed). Gallery Link
The exhibition includes current large felt pieces (through 2017) and earlier works from 1988 and beyond. Exhibition text "In the failed utopian & Other Stories Cyrilla Mozenter exhibits two and three-dimensional pieces of hand stitched industrial wool felt and works on and with paper. Using deceptively simple, pictogram-like images along with letters and words, Mozenter has invented her own language. The work is in the tradition of iconic images. Cycladic idols, medieval tapestries, Fra Angelico's frescos, African divination figures, and Aboriginal cave painting are points of reference. The involvement, however, is not with a standardized symbolic system. Through an immersion in an intuitive and improvisational process, a personal symbolism, which has reverberations beyond the self is discovered and revealed."

The detail and surfaces of the silk thread and felts is seductive and meticulous.

Animal seeking its cave (context image below several down)

Earlier drawings - late 1980s

The cave.

As one moves through the room new areas and time periods reveal themselves in an unfolding world of multiple components, perceived as much as sensed--all meticulously fastened.

One sees in the earlier works on paper the nascent underpinnings of the current works.

Monday, April 30, 2018

Spirit in the Landscape

Cities, gardens, mindscapes, landscapes.

Shara Hughes at Pace - monoprint landscape

Down the hall from Pace prints, a wonderful exhibition -

The dense, multi-colored surfaces of Milton Resnick at Cheim and Reid.

Beautiful ink: Wang Dongling, Poetry and Painting at Chambers Fine Art

Elizabeth Insogna in a group show at Abrons Art Center

Nathlie Provosty at Nathalie Karg

Jonathan Lyndon Chase at Company Gallery

Lucy Dodd at David Lewis

Milton Resnick works on paper/figurative works at Miguel Abreu

Diana Cooper at NYSS

Joe Overstreet at Eric Firestone Loft

Carrie Moyer at Mary Boone 57th St.

Milton Avery at Yares Art

A stunning series of landscapes by Avery

Zhao Wou-ki at Marlborough: both watercolors and ink, great to see.

As well as working in the round...

Matthew Wong at Karma. Wong is well acquainted with China's major ink artists.

Emily Berger's gestural stripe paintings in the group exhibition Haptic/Optic at Equity Gallery on the LES

Pamela Jorden, an LA painter, debuts a NY solo at Klaus von Nichtssagen

Jasmine Little at Johannes Vogt in her NY debut. Little trained at UCLA and lived in LA for many years. Her work is lit from within, a magical merger of paint and drawing.