Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Beautiful review of Min Hyung featured in Idiom Magazine!


Becoming Comrades
by LAILA PEDRO on JULY 8, 2011
Min Hyung, Dual Side of Female Hero, 2011. Via Freight+Volume
......Min Hyung’s big canvases feature an exhilarating diversity of texture and depth, so thick and swirly that they sometimes look edible, like saltwater taffy. Working in a mode we might call ‘epic whimsy’ she flings, swirls, dots, daubs and carefully etches varieties of paint ranging from sheer, gold-flecked Mattel pinks to dense, fat edges whose viscous darkness sucks light from the central figures. These, nevertheless, remain central. Ms. Hyung says she is inspired by Savage Beauty, the McQueen show currently drawing crowds at the Met, and in particular by McQueen’s assertion that “I want to empower women. I want people to be afraid of the women I dress.” Even if this idea of empowering “women” doesn’t quite scan – either in Hyung’s paintings or McQueen’s creations – a kind of archetypal warrior woman is certainly in evidence. A blue-white feminine figure, her back turned to the viewer and holding a sword aloft is a recurring motif in two of the three paintings, in the third she holds a vaguely umbilical thread or rope reminiscent of Frida Kahlo. The influence of fashion, in particular of preparatory sketches for couture collections, is clear in the leggy, statuesque figures, scaled for spectacle, that double down on the McQueen-ish themes of facing/displacing, masking/revealing and directional dislocation. Discerning the fronts and backs of the bodies, despite their flat, declarative lines, is a challenge. The heraldic quality and mutable nature of these bodies adds medieval iconographies to an epic list of references that includes Bosch, Botticelli, Max Ernst, and Delacroix. Each of these operates on and around the body “real” and the body represented. Theorist Jeffrey Jerome Cohen:

Medieval bodies were caught between gravitational forces that pulled them at once toward a fantasy of impossible completeness….and at the same time confronted them with a daily spectacle of of the flesh dissolving into pieces, of bodies composed of metamorphic humoral fluids, of the corporeal as the scene for the staging of magic, holiness, perversity, wonder. Bodies were, quite simply, caught in a process of erupitve becoming.

Hyung’s work shares with medieval bestiaries this fantasy of impossible completeness, of the volcanically transformative potential of the body, even as the contemporary moment injects a mechanical, quasi-bionic quality. The flat figures at center, gilded and half-armored, work as a visual springboard for an entirely other network of bodies; each style relying on another to highlight its specific impact. At the bases of the canvases the eye endlessly recombines a careful mess of totemic, fragmented people and animals, reminiscent of illustration, to produce a menagerie of fantastic beings.
........
http://idiommag.com/2011/07/becoming-comrades/

Min Hyung's work gets reviewed and video recorded by NYC based well known artcritic James Kalm. begins at 3 min 23 second (please wait a few seconds w


This summer group show features works by a cast of female artists exploring the notion of displacement and return. Genevieve White, a Canadian performance artist slathers herself with cooking ingredients to create "impressions" of the "good wife" gone wild. Meridith Pingree's kinetic sculptures cleverly subvert objects used for decorative fashion accessories. Min Hyung paints large scale expressionistic scenes of mythical heroines using collage, spray paint and thick oil impasto. This posthumous exhibition of Korean artist Eunah Kim (1973-2010) features "Happy Lung" flags a poignant reference to the lung cancer that eventually took her life.
Migration at FRIEGHT+VOLUME
www.youtube.com
This summer group show features works by a cast of female artists exploring the notion of displacement and return. Genevieve White, a Canadian performance ar...
Migration at FRIEGHT+VOLUME
www.youtube.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbK7Cqz7wPI

Min Hyung's work featured on the 22 Magazine blog, based in Brooklyn!


MIN HYUNG: SEXAQUARIUM.
June 29, 2011, 7:00 am


The Fifth World: Sexaquarium
This particular sub-series are scenes from a place within The Fifth World called SEXAQUARIUM, which as theme explores the notions of sex and the isolated network of aquarium life. Big aquariums give feeling of a whole different reality, so vast, so foreign, so powerful, colourful and imaginative; where an abundance of continuous and simultaneous action is taking place. Aquariums are immediately captivating and draw the viewers in with its constant motion.

After food and survival, sex is the biggest motivation in life; sex is colourful, full of movement, vibrant and dynamic. Combining these two concepts I am able to make analogies of the intimate and omnipotent world of our secret sexual desire that may or may not lay dormant in our minds. My work is story based, although self directed it offers the viewer universality; where viewer can relate through visualization of an image and the thoughts, feelings, expectations subconscious and conscious, on our internal world.

http://the22magazine.wordpress.com/2011/06/29/min-hyung-sexaquarium/

Min Hyung discusses her painting Its Hailing Men, filmed by Travis Renyolds for the Calgary Herald


http://www.skewgallery.com/hyung_video.htm


Min Hyung
Drew Anderson | Feb.26.2011 | comments 0
Most artists struggle for attention, spending years trying to get noticed. That’s not the case for Min Hyung. Before she had even graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design, she was exhibiting and getting write-ups in the Globe and Mail. Her strange painted and sculpted creations, on now at the Art Gallery of Calgary, are bright works on dark matters. Until April 9. At the Art Gallery of Calgary. $2 to $5. artgallerycalgary.org.