exhibition

To the Furthest Verge

Artists Ji-Yeun Hong, Debbie Han, Dong Won Shin

09.Oct.07 - 10.Nov.07

I-MYU Projects
23 Charlotte Road, London
London EC2A 3PB
020 7033 4480
imyuprojects@gmail.com
www.i-myu.com
Tube Old Street, Liverpool Street, Shoreditch / Hoxton

This exhibition pushes established convention to the edge. Three emerging Korean artists, Debbie Han, Ji-Yeun Hong and Dong Won Shin, challenge and provide unexpected twists on Korean cultural tradition through their progressive art.

'Here and elsewhere to the furthest verge' is a line uttered by the antagonist Henry Bolingbroke in Shakespeare's Richard II (1593). A cunning and gifted challenger in disguise to the less competent but rightful king, Richard II, Bolingbroke pushes boundaries in order to take the crown. In a similar vein, this show illustrates the artist's explorations of their local and traditional origins to the furthest verge to assume their new place in a contemporary capacity.

Korean-American Debbie Han's photography and ceramic sculpture go beyond the boundaries of traditional aesthetics while challenging established notions and stereotypes of beauty. Since Antiquity, the icon of beauty in the West has been represented through the image of Venus. Han's hybridisation of Asian female bodies and stereotypical facial features of diverse ethnic groups with traditional canonical proportion and conventions of beauty in her photography and celadon sculpture introduce viewers to new aesthetic territories.

The image in Ji-Yeun Hong's recent work is on the verge of transformation from traditional Korean folk painting to re-contextualised contemporary art. She effaces the original meanings of traditional Korean images by dramatising them into elusive and unreal icons. By boldly presenting the false images, audiences may suppose that these are more realistic than the original images as aesthetic consciousness could replace reality with falsehood. By walking the delicate line between traditional perception and contemporary appreciation, she challenges viewers to move beyond the boundaries of Oriental and Occidental.

The visual tension in Dong Won Shin's ceramic sculpture is created by dismantling dimensions and introducing contemporary lines. Her work lies on the verge of reality as she aims to manipulate the two-dimensional surface into an illusion of three-dimensional space without resorting to employing traditional techniques. While her work respects the style of traditional clay techniques, she goes beyond simply assembling different mediums and forms but stitches together fragments of reality to encourage innovative spatial perceptions and visual awareness.

Through the work of these three artists who boldly confront social and artistic conventions and reconstruct them to reflect their contemporary experiences, it is hoped that this exhibition will stimulate conversations in contemporary discernment here or elsewhere to the furthest verge.