Joyce Kim
dal 27/3/2003 al 28/4/2003
Segnalato da
27/3/2003
Joyce Kim
Priska C. Juschka Fine Art - Old location, New York
In Flake Joyce Kim snatches large-scale abstract painting from its familiar tragic mode and flings it deep into comedy. Kim's unique methodology begins with chance. After pouring paint onto sheets of glass, she scrapes up the results: random, accidental shapes that will become the primary elements of her painting.
"Flake"
PAINTINGS
Opening: Friday March 28, 2003, 7-10pm
Philosophies of comedy, like philosophies of beauty,
are forever doomed to failure. Most of them,
however, agree on one point: that the interplay of
disparate elements breeds surprise, and surprise, of
course, is the catalyst for all comedy. In Flake,
her first solo show at Priska C. Juschka Fine Art,
Joyce Kim snatches large-scale abstract painting
from its familiar tragic mode and flings it deep
into comedy.
Kim's unique methodology begins with chance. After
pouring paint onto sheets of glass, she scrapes up
the results: random, accidental shapes that will
become the primary elements of her painting. That's
when artistic intent takes over. On large canvases,
most of which sport a perfectly monochromatic finish
with no trace of either brush or knife, she collages
each hardened paint spill, fixing it in perilous
folds with the aid of more poured paint. As
flatness rendered three-dimensional, these
compositions qualify as sculpture as much as they do
painting. Emerging from these abstract
compositions, scraps of speech add a fourth
dimension. With their offbeat inflections, these
floating referents turn the somber business of
abstraction into a game -- a silly word search
tucked in a modern art textbook.
The humor in these paintings, however, serves up
something more transgressive than belly laughs.
Indeed, with this body of work Kim has managed a
fresh and intelligent critique of that sacred apex
of modern art, abstract expressionism. Seizing
Jackson Pollock's seminal masculinist gesture, as
well as the god-like scale of his paintings, she
turns them out with the archetypal postmodern and
feminine technique, collage. As dryly academic as
the results of this exercise could have been, Kim's
critique ultimately hinges on the strength of her
paintings as paintings. On these terms, she
succeeds magnificently.
The radicality of her technique supports an extreme
anti-aesthetic, and armed with her sharp eye for
composition, Kim choreographs her spilled effluents
with gawky grace. They dangle from the canvas and
curl up from puddled paint like melting cosmetics.
They pin each other like tape and sag like draped
fabric. Holding them all together is Kim's
pitch-perfect color palette, a comic dialogue
between corporeal browns, sugary pinks and tasteful
blues and greens. With these nauseating
confections, she proposes a major development in
painting, a singular contribution to the discipline
that combines brains, beauty, humor and strength.
Joyce Kim was born in Korea and received a Masters
Degree from NYU in 1994. In 2001 her work was
selected for a solo exhibition in Artists Space's
special project room. She was the 2002 recipient of
the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award for painting.
She currently lives and works in Brooklyn.
Join Priska Juschka and the artist at the gallery
for an opening reception on Friday, March 28nd from 7:00 to 10:00 PM.
Gallery hours: Thursday through Monday 12:00 to 6:00
PM or by appointment.
PRISKA C. JUSCHKA FINE ART
97 North 9th Street, (Berry Street & Wythe Ave.) Brooklyn, NY 11211