Fertile Ground
May 4th through May 28th, 2017
Opening Reception: Thursday, May 4th, 2017 6-8PM
Location: Ray Gallery, 55 Washington St #721, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Hours: Mon, Tues 12-6PM, Sat 12-3PM, and By appointment
Curators: Eun Young Choi & Inkook Choi
Artists: Tai Hwa Goh & Yeon Ji Yoo
Additional events: Dumbo Open Studio (May 13 & 14)
The AHL Foundation and Ray Gallery are pleased to present Fertile Ground, a co-curated exhibition by Inkook Choi and Eun Young Choi.
Fertile Ground will showcase the works of two Korean-American artists Tai Hwa Goh and Yeon Ji Yoo who address re-imagined memories and the cycle of life through powerful and compelling site-specific installations. Goh and Yoo have very distinctive approaches of expression; yet collectively touch upon subject matters of memories, accumulations, and sense of loss. The multi-layered material buildup used in the installations reflect growth and abundance as well as the cyclical displacement of life which once again become nourishment for regrowth.
Tai Hwa Goh creates a delicately layered installation from printed and cut paper. Her imagery evokes biological forms and landscape, reflecting on the accumulation of memory and experience, and the interior and exterior worlds of the human body. She constructs tubes, pipes, and balls brimming with fluid-like stands of paper as a metaphor for the cycle of the body, industrial machinery, and natural phenomena, as well as the endless processes of growth and decay.
Yeon Ji Yoo’s wooded landscapes have the presence of dust and dirt signifying the process of aging and decomposition. Yoo’s reimagined landscape comes from the history of her motherland evoking a sense of loss and pain of the post-war condition yet retains a dreamlike quality. Yoo believes smells and textures, sounds and images trigger the recurrence of a memory like the wind that shifts stale air trapped inside a drawer closed for a long time. Like a time portal, the private grove of trees and seeds seem to usher in things that were forgotten long ago.
Born in South Korea, Tai Hwa Goh received her Bachelor’s degree from Seoul National University and her Master’s degree from the University of Maryland. Her work has been shown at various prominent institutions and art events in New York and New Jersey such as International Print Center New York, DUMBO Art Festival, Islip Museum, William Paterson University, AIR Gallery, and Snug Harbor Center for the Art. She recently had an installation show at Sunroom Project Space at Wave Hill and BRIC. Her list of awards includes but are not limited to Lower East Side Print Shop, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, National Endowments for the Arts, Guttenberg Art, Emerge 11 and Vermont Studio Center. She will be the Artist-in-Residence at the Museum of Arts and Design’s Artist Studios Program in the summer.
Yeon Ji Yoo is a Korean American artist based in New York. She holds a BFA in Advancement for the Science and Arts from the Cooper Union and an MFA from Pratt Institute. Her work has been included in a number of exhibitions at institutions such as the Queens Museum, New York; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Highline Gallery, New York; Russian Art Museum, New Jersey; Glyndor Gallery and the Sunroom Project Space at Wave Hill; New York; and Samek Art Museum; Pennsylvania. In recognition of excellence, she was awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2011. She has also been working as a public school teacher for the NYC DOE, portfolio instructor for the Queens Council on the Arts and a drawing professor at Queens College.
About AHL Foundation
The AHL (Art, Humanity, Love) Foundation is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization established in 2003 to support Korean artists living in the United States and to promote exposure of their work in today’s highly competitive contemporary art world. In addition to nurturing underrepresented and underrecognized artists in the US, AHL Foundation is committed to educating the public and invigorating the Korean community, one of the largest ethnic groups in New York City, through art history courses offered in the Korean language, public lectures, artist studio visits, guided tours to museums and galleries, and workshops for artists and the general public.
Fertile Ground is co- organized by AHL Foundation Inc. and Ray Gallery and funded, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, New York Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. Additional support has been provided by Jason J. Kim Oral Design and Kiss Products Inc.
