If you happen to be in New York before August 1st, you are welcome to stop at Orogenies, a double-exhibition event that promotes the works of the artists Jisook Kim and Hilda Shen.
In the setting of FOU GALLERY, an apartment gallery, whose purpose is to offer a selection of original works of art and design of contemporary talents and creatives, the two artists narrate and interpret a common theme: the formation of mountains.
Related: Interview with Hilda Shen, Interview with Jisook Kim
Info about the event:
July 6 – August 11, 2019
Location: Fou Gallery, 410 Jefferson Ave #1, Brooklyn, New York, NY 11221
Hours: Saturday 11 am – 6 pm, or by appointment (info@fougallery.com)
Curator and Poster Design: Tansy Xiao
Jisook Kim is a South Korean sculptor who represents the delicate coexistence of life, energy and time with a marble technique that incorporates lines drawn and variable in her multidimensional installations.
While Hilda Shen is a sculptor, designer who through her works revives the long memories of the lost time creating a wormhole that holds the enigma of the firmament.
The focus of both their creations is the reduction of landscapes in detached and isolated imprints of nature: an organic coalescence, all synthesized in ethereal poetics with an allusion of disturbing immensity. Nature and time are reinterpreted through different approaches. The mountains with their chronic crustal movements demonstrate a process of continuity of time with a different rhythm than our human time. The analyzed natural phenomenon, whose spectacularity is irrelevant for human activities, but continuously watched by humanity in the course of history, is artistically translated by the artists through different means and using their own personal visual languages.
In the simplified abstract models of Jisook Kim, who was trained as a traditional sculptor in South Korea, the energy of nature is embodied in an artificial but organic form, indicating an ambiguous state of existence that confuses the boundaries between reality and imagination, between human life and the cosmos. Hilda Shen with her sculptures and the idiosyncrasies of Chinese erudite rocks highlights the enormity of the human footprint within the environment.
The first artist evokes and transmits, with light materials and flexibility, through topographic patterns the static serenity of the mountains that lets their power and omnipresence emerge. The second artist instead works with simple materials, arranged in layers that evoke the historical-geographical stratification. Her installations determine the different spatial dimensions.
The mountains devoid of human artifacts, testify to the greatness of nature. The sense of natural geographical boundaries and the sense of boundaries decided by human beings are different interpretations of life on our planet. The intersection between human time and geological time does not coincide. The mountains change despite they have the same geographical coordinates. Their image is, therefore, a collection of memories of a bygone era, but also in the making.
The dialogue between humans, nature, space and time are significant. In addition, the exhibition is also interesting as a concrete example of female collaboration. Further to the two artists, we can appreciate the work of the curator who coordinates the event, Tansy Xiao, the gallery owner Echo He and the official photographer of the event Nadia Peichao Li, and other women of the team, to show that when women team up, their synergies can leave significant signs.
Photo courtesy of Fou Gallery
Art: ©Jisook Kim ©Hilda Shen
Photographer: Nadia Peichao Lin
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