Noh, Sang-Kyoon "Conjuring Constellations"

Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery

poster for Noh, Sang-Kyoon "Conjuring Constellations"

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Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery presents "Conjuring Constellations", a solo exhibition of Korean artist Noh, Sang-Kyoon.

Noh, Sang-Kyoon chooses to follow his personal mythos as a source and driver for his creative process. Covered in thousands of sequins that he threads together by hand, the early sculptures and canvasses of Noh, Sang-Kyoon trace their origins to both the ordinary and the spiritual form the memory of his mother's spangled bag and the costumes of singers on television, to a near-death childhood experience, when he nearly drowned. He realized than that he "could die in vain, as nobody, as nothing, with no purpose, as if a fish without scales that is doomed to perish." He later translated these memories info a series of early work where sequins created the shining appearance of life-saving fish scales.

In his past work , the Buddha series entitled "For the Worshippers", Noh, Sang-Kyoon elevates everyday objects to the meditative realm – an act that is both subtle and startling. A Buddha statue loses its previous meaning as a majestic symbol of great reverence and religious power, and becomes instead a deity that is more human, humorous and approachable. Noh, Sang-Kyoon's Buddha doesn't wear a monk's robe but rather an ornate, flashy garment of sequins.

Following his early fish and Buddha series and over time, the artist's use of sequins has grown more layered and multi-dimensional as he creates works with single colored sequins on a flat canvas, reminiscent of minimalist painting. While in his early fish series, the shiny disks worked to reference the appearance of scales, in this later works the conceptual and the spiritual are increasingly juxtaposed with the material and the imaginary world. By mining characteristics of sequins to create optical illusions, he reveals his work as fantasy but also, paradoxically, as part of how we recognize the world in which we live. What is seen, perceived and believed is no longer simply the truth, but a phenomenon where the real and the spiritual collide and our assumptions of how an object is meant to be seen are challenged. The words become highly subjective and audience participation becomes an active part of his works.

[Image: Noh, Sang-Kyoon "Constellation 7 (Pisces)" (2010) Sequins on canvas 85 x 85 in.]

Media

Schedule

from April 29, 2011 to June 04, 2011

Opening Reception on 2011-04-28 from 18:00 to 20:00

Artist(s)

Noh, Sang-Kyoon

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