SoHyun Bae/Choong Sup Lim: Wind, Water, Stone

Press Release

Skoto Gallery is pleased to present Wind, Water, Stone, a two-person exhibition of recent works by Korean American artists SoHyun Bae and Choong Sup Lim. This will be their first two-person exhibition at the gallery. The reception is on Thursday, September 19, 6-8pm.

This exhibition encourages us to think expansively about the creative process and takes its title from a 1979 poem “Wind, Water, Stone” by the celebrated Mexican poet Octavio Paz, first published in English in The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz 1957-1987 and put together by the poet’s English translator Eliot Weinberger. The poem, as summarized by the poet Roger Caillois explores the interconnectedness and transformational qualities of water, wind, and stone. Each element interacts with and influences the others in a perpetual cycle of change. Water erodes stone over time, wind disperses water, and stone provides a barrier to the wind. These interactions illustrate the dynamic and fluid nature of existence, where each element takes on roles of creation, containment, and movement in a continuous cycle. The poem reflects on the philosophical idea that everything in the world is inter-connected and constantly evolving despite their apparent solidity or permanence.

Despite their varied experiences working across different time periods, SoHyun Bae and Choong Sup Lim manage to engage in an intergenerational dialogue while continuing their long-standing commitment to the exploration of a completely personal and original style of abstraction whose true meaning lies not merely in formal arrangement but in spiritual meaning that fuels intangible ideas around human nature while simultaneously meditating on the human condition. As artists who continue to live and work in New York over several decades, they have developed a highly experimental approach to making art that combines acute awareness of the role of transnationalism in the creative process with a deep passion for exploring the nuances of their Korea America heritage to create works of universal resonance that often defy easy categorization.

SoHyun Bae is Korean by birth, American by upbringing and cosmopolitan by experience. She creates mixed media works on canvas that address issues of personal and cultural identity. Her rich complex compositions draw on the visual traditions of both Asian and Western art in a manner that is neither superficial nor eclectic but rooted firmly in her belonging to both cultures. There is a lyrical beauty evocative of shifting interior and exterior spaces that belies the surprising seamlessness between the spiritual and physical worlds. There is value for spontaneity and improvisation in her work that engages the viewer directly and viscerally as ideas are distilled into swirling or meandering marks that heighten their perceptual subtlety. Bae’s work approaches a perspective universal enough to include all of us. She is the recipient of numerous awards including the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in Fine Arts, 2007; She was a resident artist at The Corporation of Yaddo and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, among others. Her works were exhibited worldwide in galleries and museums including the Asian Art Museum of SF, Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology at Harvard University, Seoul Arts Center Hangaram Museum, Museo Nacional di Visual Artes in Montevideo, Sotheby’s, NYC, and Philips de Puny Luxembourg.

Choong Sup Lim is a versatile artist whose work in diverse media including painting, sculpture, drawing, installation and video draws on past wisdom and future possibilities to create relevant dialogue across time. Embracing improvisation and experimentation as an ongoing conceptual approach, his work strives to reveal the subjectivity and individuality of the artist, and seeks to strike a balance between nature, object and composition. There is an intellectual rigor in his work that reflects subtle understanding of context and total control of the material he uses which makes possible an intimate integration of vision and matter. The beauty of Lim’s art lies in its ability to tell stories that transcend borders and speak to universal audiences. Born 1941 in Jincheon, Chungcheong Buk-do, Choong Sup Lim graduated from Seoul National University in 1964, and moved to New York in 1973, where he continues to live and work ever since. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian’s Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and the Leeum Samsung Museum of Art in Korea.

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