exhibition

Bon-A Koo and Yeonsoo Ha

31.Jan.08 - 02.Mar.08

I-MYU Projects
23 Charlotte Road
London
London EC2A 3PB
02070334480 / 07796625668
imyuprojects@gmail.com
www.i-myu.com
Tube Old Street, Liverpool Street, Shoreditch / Hoxton

PRESS RELEASE

FORGET ME NOT
1 February - 2 March 2008

Yeon Soo Ha / Bon-A Koo

Opening Reception 1st February 6-8pm
Tuesday-Saturday 12-6pm or by appointment

IMYU-Projects is pleased to announce Forget Me Not, an exhibition by Korean artists Yeon Soo Ha and Bon-A Koo. The show takes its title from the name of a common flower whose name infers a history of romance and remembering. Drawing on romantic traditions, derived respectively from the natural and man-made world, Yeon Soo Ha and Bon-A Koo, present contemporary fictions of a classical order.

Yeon Soo Ha's botanical paintings are explorations of colour as much as they are of subject. Painted by applying dry pigment to absorbent paper, the traditional technique she uses combines stone powder with a porous Korean or bronze
paper allowing the colour to completely infuse the surface. The works are informed by the writing of Kwakhee who has
theorised on the role of colour within eastern painting, arguing that colours are not perceived as stable referents of an object, but moreover as informants of change, of a temporal and emotional charge, "The colour of water is green in spring, blue in summer, cobalt blue in autumn, and black in winter..." Yeon Soo Ha's paintings present through layered and recurring motifs an intense and shifting kaleidoscope of colour that constantly alters our optical reception of the subject, and draws us to a continuing wonderment of nature.

In contrast Bon-A Koo presents a world of man-made architectures. Painted on hand-made Korean paper the works depict derelict buildings and explore, through indirect references to the natural world, the romantic fictions of ancient and classical structures. The Korean paper used, intricately pressed from multiple rectangles of paper, plays into the formal construction of the brickwork drawn and painted on its surface. The reduced tonal ranges of the works are punctuated by occasional stains of colour, and are further activated by patterned textures of fauna and flowers that emerge, almost invisibly, within areas of painted stonework. Here nature is seen reclaiming its own space, and this reclamation extends through additional motifs of butterflies, whose symmetrical form and wing patterns become further layers of camouflage.

For further information please call :
0207 033 4480, or email imyuprojects@gmail.com

NOTES TO EDITORS
I-MYU Projects established a permanent gallery space in London in 2007, and represents artists from the Far East and South East Asia.