Saneun Hwang “Concrete Utopia”

Local Project

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Local Project presents Concrete Utopia, a solo exhibition by Brooklyn-based artist and graphic designer Saneun Hwang. Featuring digital prints of the artist’s photography, digital collages, and visual poetry, the show will explore the artist’s interpretation and impression of living in NYC, a city with constantly changing urban landscape.

Inspired by Russian Constructivism and the Concrete Poetry Art Movement during the early 1910s, the show will consist of two main projects:

The Urban Utopia will feature photographs taken in New York City, capturing building facades, glass, construction sites, and layers of concrete landscape. Interplay of texture, color and material creates compelling patterns of urban imagery. On the contrary, Urban Visual Poetry takes a microscopic approach, touching upon the disconcerting effects of capitalism on human beings. The arrangement of text and typographical effects asks the viewer to question our relation amongst the ever-changing metropolis.

From dwelling in international metropolitan areas her entire life, the artist has witnessed how rapidly urban development wipes out its own historical, social, and cultural aspects of the city. Our surroundings become radically unfamiliar and their originality is recklessly altered and shifted.

Showcased in the heart of Long Island City, an area noticeably busy with the continuous influx of people and construction, this project effort will showcase those old and new as part of this ever-changing man-made transformation.

Saneun graduated with a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2017. Her work was featured in The Long Island City Journal, JAB (The Journal of Artists’ Books), Graphis Photography Annual, and NYSAI Press. She has shown her work at Local Project; the annual New York Art Book Fair (NYABF); Korean Culture Center New York; Carrie Able Gallery, Lazy Susan Gallery, and more.

Recently, Saneun was chosen as a recipient of the 2021 Queens Art Fund for her collaborative project with fellow artist Keiko Yamazaki