Displaced Realities – Opening Reception

Oriental VisArt‘s fourth exhibition Displaced Realities opened with a vernissage on 6 April 2011 at 6 p.m. at Carry On Art Contemporian in Plainpalais, Geneva, Switzerland. Again, we were very lucky for the weather; it was a beautiful day and beautiful evening. Guests enjoyed the works by Ayoung Kim (Korea), James Chen-Feng Kao (Taiwan/USA) and Hongjie Ma (China) in the 350 square metre gallery. Oriental VisArt is displaying 17 photographs and 6 drawings in this incredible space. The exhibition will run until 19 April every day at Carry On in Plainpalais, Geneva, Switzerland. We look forward to seeing you there on these sunny Swiss days!

Please enjoy images from the opening reception.

Carry On Art Contemporian

Display view

Display view (Ayoung Kim)

Display view (Hongjie Ma)

Display view (James C. Kao)

Guests

Guests

Guest

Guests

Guests

Guests

Oriental Visart’s fourth exhibition, “Displaced Realities”

Oriental VisArt will be opening our fourth exhibition, Displaced Realities on 6 April 2011 at 6 p.m. with an opening reception / vernissage. The exhibition features three of OVA’s member Artists, Ayoung Kim (Korean), James Chen-Feng Kao (Taiwanese/American), and Hongjie Ma (Chinese). The exhibition will run until 19 April 2011 at Carry On Art Contemporain in Geneva. We look forward to seeing everyone there!

« Displaced Realities » features works by three Asian artists: Ayoung Kim (Korea), James Chen-Feng Kao (Taiwan/USA) and Hongjie Ma(China).

The Artists’ practices navigate contemporary dilemmas of human existence. They engage directly with the ascendancy of a mentality that has originated in the west and has today become typical of human civilisation; that of the radical secularisation of human life.  We live in a world that is obsessed with progress, which as a secondary manifestation is leaving individuals with a sense of dislocation and displacement within new and native environments.  Within this exhibition, the Artists reveal the effect and fragility of a status quo defined by change.

Ayoung Kim’s work Minima Memoria is a series of photographs concerned with headlines describing serious crimes, suicides, mysterious incidents and disasters.  The Artist attempts to bring new meaning to each tragedy by producing imagery taken in her own environments – her native Korea and her adopted UK – then through cutting and pasting Kim creates 3D models to reconstruct each scenario. The Artist uses to effect disproportionate scale, adding shadows to create angular perspectives and cutting out detail to deconstruct the meaning of the original images.  The meticulously crafted photomontage works provide sets for staging the artist herself, a character dislocated and displaced, finding echoes of her own experience in disasters that happened just around the corner, or to girls whose experience as students abroad mirrors her own (until the moment they disappeared)1.

Born in Seoul, Korea, in 1979, Ayoung Kim has completed a BA in Photography (Honours) from the London College of Communication (University of the Arts London) and a Masters of Arts in Fine Art at the Chelsea College of Art and Design.  She has exhibited in France, Germany, Hungary and notably at the Saatchi Gallery in London in 2009, and is the recipient of the 2009/2010 Young Art Frontier Grant from the Arts Council of Korea. 2010 was been a particularly successful year for the Artist winning The British Institution Award at the Royal Academy of the Arts and the Flash Forward – Emerging Photographers Award from the Canadian Magenta  Foundation.  She was also selected as a finalist in the Future Map Prize at the University of the Arts London and for Bloomberg New Contemporaries.  This year Kim will undertake a residency at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, supported by the Arts Council of Korea. Kim currently lives and works in London.

James Chen-Feng Kao is an emerging Taiwan-born American artist with an integrated practice in drawing, sculpture and installation.  Through his work he questions his own identity, of which is a blend of Asian and American cultures.  The Artist claims his work ‘lies in the moment of interaction between the viewers and the work’, when the viewer deciphers the images and concludes that what is seen is not what was expected.  In order to achieve this, Kao creates graphic characters using ink strokes inspired by Chinese calligraphy.  The characters are placed in large-scale format drawings, then abstracted and juxtaposed with photo-transferred elements to present narrative concepts.  The multiplicity of the characters and the lack of any one specific character reflect the Artist’s self-perceived notion of being a constant stranger, dislocated and displaced.

The Artist earned a Bachelor of Arts Degrees in Art Practice at the University of California, Berkeley, and in 2008 completed his Master of Arts.  Kao currently lives and works in New York.

Hongjie Ma presents selected works from his latest series of photographs, Family Stuff; a project started in 2005 in collaboration with fellow photographer Qinjung Huang, portraying ‘family dwellings turned inside out : furniture, accessories, animals and all, neatly presented – in the front yards. Ma aims to portray Chinese families from different ethnic backgrounds and regions in order to chronicle average Chinese living conditions today.  China is an immense country with diverse terrain and dramatically differing lives according to geographic location.  The Artist takes portraits that intentionally reveal how his subjects inhabit their environments and how these environments mould their lives.

Despite the geographical differences in each photograph, the works show a common simplicity and unpretentiousness of the average modern Chinese household, which is interestingly devoid of political paraphernalia that might have been amongst the possessions a few decades ago.  Thus, above all, the Artists want to show the profound transition that China is undergoing, which is particularly revealing in the everyday lives of normal families.  In the Confucian tradition family is considered as institution4, and family life in rural areas still represents identity rather than style, as opposed to homes in Chinese cities where existence and livelihood has been superseded by Western ways of life and materialism. The Artist is concerned with portraying China from its authentic side, chronicling the reality of the country’s rural majority.

The possessions photographed have become symbols of a people dislocated and displaced from their authentic reality, with ‘time’ being the protagonist.  Each photograph shows its effects and relativity: aged houses soon to be replaced by modern buildings which are already looming in the background, it presents its manifestations in TVs and refrigerators alongside traditional furniture and cooking utensils.

Hongjie Ma is a photo-journalist who has been documenting Chinese life for over 15 years.  His work has been published in national and international publications.  To date part of the Family Stuff series has been shown in Beijing in 2007 and Paris Photo 2011. The project is due for completion this year and a book will be published of the entire series.

Sascha Gianella
March, 2011

"Man Hits Bus Roof after 70Ft Death Plunge, 29 May, 2007", digital c-type print, 160 x 120 cm (Edition 3+2AP) / 100 x 76 cm (Edition 5+2AP), 2007~8 (Ayoung Kim)

'Everyone wants some Kung Fu fighting #2', (James Chen-Feng Kao)

Location: Qinghai Lake, 2006 (Hongjie Ma)

Korean Artist Ayoung Kim

Ayoung Kim was born in Seoul, Korea in 1979. Currently living in and working in London, Ayoung specialises in Photography and New Media. She received a B.A. in Visual Communication Design at Kookmin University in Seoul in 2002, as well as another B.A. (Honours) in Photography at London College of Communication. In 2010, she earned her M.A. in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art and Design in London. Ayoung is about to begin a residency at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany (Supported by Arts Council Korea). She will also be a part of Oriental VisArt’s upcoming group exhibition in Geneva in April. Her works have been shown all over the globe since 2006, and some of her most recent exhibitions include:

Solo Exhibitions
2010	Minima Memoria	Street Level Gallery, Glasgow, UK
2009	A Delegation	Window Gallery at Gallery Hyundai, Seoul, Korea
	Ephemera	I-Myu Projects, London, UK
Group Exhibitions
2010	Summer Exhibition 2010	Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK
	Window Vol.2 (Upcoming)	Gallery Hyundai, Seoul, Korea
	Hi, Mr. Lonely	Gana Contemporary and Gana Art Busan, Seoul and Busan, Korea
	4482 Contemporary Korean Artists in London	Bargehouse, London, UK
	Osannolik Digital Festival	Kulturnatten, Växjö, Sweden
	Ways of Seeing (Part II)	I-Myu Projects, London, UK
2009	2009 Seoul International Photography Festival	Garden 5, Seoul, Korea
	Korea Tomorrow	SETEC, Seoul, Korea
	Salon09	Four Corners Film, London, UK
	Aim High: Joong-Ang Fine Arts Prize Awarded Artists Show	Hangaram Museum, Seoul Arts Center, Seoul, Korea
	Korean Eye: Moon Generation	Saatchi Gallery, London, UK
	The Cinematic-Montage	Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
	The Irony	Kimi Art, Seoul, Korea

Ayoung Kim was featured in Minima Memoria,

Minima Memoria

Street Level Photoworks (2010) http://www.streetlevelphotoworks.org/

In Minima Memoria the artist has created a series of photographic and video works based around headlines in newspapers describing serious crimes, suicides, unusual incidents and disasters. From these headlines, she re-imagines and recreates the scenes as 3 dimensional photo-montages to bring a fresh and new perspective to the story. The artist has described the photographs as representing various fleeting and ephemeral events that happen in the world, being transformed into representations in news media.

‘(Kim) deconstructs and reconstructs a world of images to explore her own place within it… Her dizzying angular perspectives provide sets for staging herself, a character dislocated and displaced, finding echoes of her own experience in disasters that happened just around the corner, or to girls whose experience as students abroad mirrors her own (until the moment they disappeared). Meaning emerges from Kim’s fearless examination of the meaninglessness of these small catastrophes. She cannot unlock the mystery of Alexander Litvinenko’s death or an anonymous city suicide; the construction of each dense delirious image is an opportunity for the artist to project herself imaginatively into a scenario, to probe its poetic and metaphorical possibilities… Ayoung Kim restages the crime with the cool logic of the detective and the gruesome fascination of the voyeur. Her cutting and pasting takes place in three dimensional space, yielding impossible spaces for the eye to penetrate. In the process of montage some of the original meaning of the images is lost, and other meanings accrue.’

She says,

“‘It happens that the stage-sets collapse.’ – Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus (Camus, 1955)

These photographs represents various events happened recently in the world or the traces or ambiences of after-the-accidents. I transform them into the stage sets/models I created. Researching of each tragic story, I take pictures from my environment and the actual scene of accident/crime, then alter the images and move them into stage sets according to each context of event.

The reality effect from built-up photographs exists only through camera with proper angle and composition and eventually in the final image, as the stage sets are temporary construction. These can be 3-dimensional photo montages or just stage-sets. Also, these are Ephemera (Items of short-lived duration, use, or interest) of Ephemera (a short-lived thing). Most of the title of each photograph is referring news headline, however, recent pieces have seemingly abstract titles as the work gradually became autonomous rather than dutifully following the narrative line.”

Please enjoy images of Ayoung’s works!

“CCTV Captures Death Chase, 19 July 2007”, digital c-type print, 160 x 120 cm (Edition 3+2AP) / 100 x 76 cm (Edition 5+2AP), 2008

“Policeman Falls to Death Trying to Save Suicide-Bid Youth, 05 Jun 2008”, digital c-type print, 163 x 210 cm(Edition 3+2AP) / 150x116cm (Edition 5+2AP), 2009

"Not in the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time 2", digital c-type print, 160 x 120 cm, 2010

"Headless Body Found in Thames, 21 April, 2007", digital c-type print, 160 x 120 cm (Edition 3+2AP) / 100 x 76 cm (Edition 5+2AP), 2007

Korean Artist Ayoung Kim

Ayoung Kim was born in Seoul, Korea in 1979, and is currently living and working in London. She received a B.A. in Visual Communication Design at Kookmin University in Seoul in 2002, as well as another B.A. (Honours) in Photography at London College of Communication. In 2010, she earned her M.A. in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art and Design in London. Ayoung specialises in Photography and New Media. Her works have been shown all over Europe and Korea, including:

Solo Exhibitions
2010	Minima Memoria	Street Level Gallery, Glasgow, UK
2009	A Delegation	Window Gallery at Gallery Hyundai, Seoul, Korea
	Ephemera	I-Myu Projects, London, UK
2008	Ephemeral Ephemera	Space VAVA, Seoul, Korea
Group Exhibitions
2010	Summer Exhibition 2010	Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK
	Window Vol.2 (Upcoming)	Gallery Hyundai, Seoul, Korea
	Hi, Mr. Lonely	Gana Contemporary and Gana Art Busan, Seoul and Busan, Korea
	4482 Contemporary Korean Artists in London	Bargehouse, London, UK
	Osannolik Digital Festival	Kulturnatten, Växjö, Sweden
	Ways of Seeing (Part II)	I-Myu Projects, London, UK
2009	2009 Seoul International Photography Festival	Garden 5, Seoul, Korea
	Korea Tomorrow	SETEC, Seoul, Korea
	Salon09	Four Corners Film, London, UK
	Aim High: Joong-Ang Fine Arts Prize Awarded Artists Show	Hangaram Museum, Seoul Arts Center, Seoul, Korea
	Korean Eye: Moon Generation	Saatchi Gallery, London, UK
	The Cinematic-Montage	Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
	The Irony	Kimi Art, Seoul, Korea
2008	The Series of Boundary between Reality and Fantasy	Museum in Gangnamgu Office, Seoul, Korea
	4482 Contemporary Korean Artists in London	Bargehouse, London, UK
	T.error: Your Fear Is an External Object	Menupont Galeria, Mucsarnok (Kunsthalle) Budapest, Budapest, Hungary
	The 1st Bridge: Scope in The Bridge	Gana Art 25th Anniversary, Insa Art Center, Korea
	Welcome Home Party	Gallery Sun Contemporary, Seoul, Korea
	30th Joong-Ang Fine Arts Prize Selected Artists Show	Hangaram Museum, Seoul Arts Center, Seoul, Korea
	Lateral Thinkers – from the Mind to the Wall inDarmstadt days of photography 2008	Mathildenhohe, Darmstadt, Germany

She says,

“‘It happens that the stage-sets collapse.’ – Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus (Camus, 1955)

These photographs represents various events happened recently in the world or the traces or ambiences of after-the-accidents. I transform them into the stage sets/models I created. Researching of each tragic story, I take pictures from my environment and the actual scene of accident/crime, then alter the images and move them into stage sets according to each context of event.

The reality effect from built-up photographs exists only through camera with proper angle and composition and eventually in the final image, as the stage sets are temporary construction. These can be 3-dimensional photo montages or just stage-sets. Also, these are Ephemera (Items of short-lived duration, use, or interest) of Ephemera (a short-lived thing). Most of the title of each photograph is referring news headline, however, recent pieces have seemingly abstract titles as the work gradually became autonomous rather than dutifully following the narrative line.”

Please enjoy images of Ayoung’s works!

"Entertainers' Suicides in Succession, Why?, 10 Feb, 2007", digital c-type print, 160 x 120 cm (Edition 3+2AP) / 100 x 76 cm (Edition 5+2AP), 2007

"Accept North Korea into the Nuclear Club or Bomb It Now, 11 Oct, 2006", digital c-type print, 160 x 120 cm (Edition 3+2AP) / 100 x 76 cm (Edition 5+2AP), 2007

"Dead Whale Found on the Shore of Jeju Island, 12 Nov, 2006", digital c-type print, 160 x 120 cm (Edition 3+2AP) / 100 x 76 cm (Edition 5+2AP), 2007

"British Teacher Found Buried in Bathtub of Sand, 28 March, 2007", digital c-type print, 160 x 120 cm (Edition 3+2AP) / 100 x 76 cm (Edition 5+2AP), 2008

Korean Artist ‘Ayoung Kim’

Ayoung Kim was born in 1979, Seoul, Korea and currently living and working in London. She was given a B.A. (Honours) Photography from London College of Communication, London, UK (1st Class in Dissertation) and now doing her M.A. Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art and Design, London, UK. She has shown her works globally as below;

Solo Exhibitions

2010   (Title Undecided), Street Level Gallery, Glasgow, UK (Upcoming)
2009   A Delegation, Window Gallery at Gallery Hyundai, Seoul, Korea
2009   Ephemera, I-Myu Projects, London, UK
2008   Ephemeral Ephemera, Space VAVA, Seoul, Korea

Selected Group Exhibitions

2010  ‘Window Vol.2′, Gallery Hyundai, Seoul, Korea (Upcoming)
2010  (Title Undecided), Gana Contemporary and Gana Art Busan, Seoul and Busan, Korea (Upcoming)
2010  ’4482 Contemporary Korean Artists in London’, Bargehouse, London, UK
2010  ’Osannolik Digital Festival’ in Kulturnatten, Växjö, Sweden
2010  ’Ways of Seeing (Part II)’, I-Myu Projects, London, UK
2009  ’2009 Seoul International Photography Festival’, Garden 5, Seoul, Korea
2009  ’Korea Tomorrow’, SETEC, Seoul, Korea
2009  ’Salon09, Four Corners Film, London, UK
2009  ’Aim High’, Joong-Ang Fine Arts Prize Awarded Artists Show, Hangaram Museum, Seoul Arts Center, Seoul, Korea
2009  ’Korean Eye’: Moon Generation, Saatchi Gallery, London, UK
2009  ’The Cinematic-Montage’, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
2009  ’The Irony’, Kimi Art, Seoul, Korea
2008  ’The Series of Boundary between Reality and Fantasy’: Museum in Gangnamgu Office, Seoul, Korea
2008  ’4482 Contemporary Korean Artists in London’, Bargehouse, London, UK
2008  ”T.error: Your Fear Is an External Object’, Menupont Galeria, Mucsarnok (Kunsthalle) Budapest, Budapest, Hungary
2008  ’The 1st Bridge’: Scope in The Bridge, Gana Art 25th Anniversary, Insa Art Center, Korea
2008  ’Welcome Home Party’, Gallery Sun Contemporary, Seoul, Korea
2008  ’30th Joong-Ang Fine Arts Prize Selected Artists Show’, Hangaram Museum, Seoul Arts Center, Seoul, Korea
2008  ’Lateral Thinkers – from the Mind to the Wall in Darmstadt days of photography 2008′, Mathildenhohe, Darmstadt, Germany

Born into a postmodern world, and self-cast as a nomad caught between cultures, Ayoung Kim returns to the scene of the crime. But where Weegee found human drama, Warhol found visual sensation and Sherman found layers of remove from human experience, Kim goes in search of herself. A dutiful student of Guy Debord and Jean Baudrillard, Kim knows that the Society of the Spectacle is triumphant, and that we have entered an order

of representation in which the copies have no original. And yet… Mid-20^th century existentialism demanded that individuals face the meaninglessness of life squarely—that they proceed in full knowledge that there is no god, no heaven and no redemption. Kim faces the postmodern crisis of representation with a similar courage. She deconstructs and reconstructs a world of images to explore her own place within it.

Her dizzying angular perspectives provide sets for staging herself, a character dislocated and displaced, finding echoes of her own experience in disasters that happened just around the corner, or to girls whose experience as students abroad mirrors her own (until the moment they disappeared). Meaning emerges from Kim’s fearless examination of the meaninglessness of these small catastrophes. She cannot unlock the mystery of Alexander Litvinenko’s death or an anonymous city suicide; the construction of each dense delirious image is an opportunity for the artist to project herself imaginatively into a scenario, to probe its poetic and metaphorical possibilities. Wordplay, classical mythology and visual puns are enlisted in a dream-like logic that brings the stories new life. Each cityscape becomes its own self-contained world, drawn from world events, but ultimately autonomous of them. Kim is not the first to explore the urban crime scene, but she is the first to explore it in this way.

Ayoung Kim restages the crime with the cool logic of the detective and the gruesome fascination of the voyeur. Her cutting and pasting takes place in three dimensional space, yielding impossible spaces for the eye to penetrate. In the process of montage some of the original meaning of the images is lost, and other meanings accrue. There is a hopefulness to this project. The work argues that fresh discoveries can be made, even in the tabloid detritus of contemporary life. The work is also elegiac. Kim proposes that in pausing to look back at the settings of these sordid urban tragedies, we may rediscover something we have lost. (2008, Lucy Soutter)

Enjoy her work images!!

‘Headless body found in Thames 21 April2007′, 160x120cm

 

‘CCTV captures death chase, 19 July 2007′, 160x120cm, 2008

 

‘Dead whale found on the shore of Jeju island,12 Nov, 2006′, 160x120cm

 

‘Man Hits Bus Roof After 70Ft Death Plunge, 29 May, 2007′, 160x120cm

 

‘British teacher found buried in bathtub of sand, 28 March, 2007′, 160x120cm

 

‘Chaos caused by monster of Blitz 15 May, 2007′, 160x120cm