Category: Artist Talk

In the modern tradition of abstract art, artists look beyond what we physically see. Using color, shape, line, and texture, they express strong emotional content without constraints of representation.

Hayoon Jay Lee uses rice as object, motif, metaphor and visceral biomorphic forms, meticulously and meditatively arranging individual grains of rice into a surface with modeling paste to create physical and emotional topographies. In this Artist Talk, Lee will be in a conversation with art critic Seph Rodney about her art and career.
Courtesy of Artist | 

In the modern tradition of abstract art, artists look beyond what we physically see. Using color, shape, line, and texture, they express strong emotional content without constraints of representation.

Hayoon Jay Lee uses rice as object, motif, metaphor and visceral biomorphic forms, meticulously and meditatively arranging individual grains of rice into a surface with modeling paste to create physical and emotional topographies.

In this Artist Talk, Lee will be in a conversation with art critic Seph Rodney about her art and career.

Artist Talk: Hayoon Jay Lee with Seph Rodney

Tuesday, October 29, 2024 | 6:30 PM (EDT)

The Korea Society
350 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor
New York, NY 10017

About the Artist:

About the Moderator:

Seph Rodney, PhD, was born in Jamaica, and came of age in the Bronx, New York. He is a former senior critic and opinions editor for Hyperallergic, and now regularly contributes to The New York Times. He has written for CNN, NBC, Art in America, American Craft Magazine and penned catalog essays on Gary Simmons, Lisa Corinne Davis, Pope.L, Teresita Fernandez, Sarah Oppenheimer, and Meleko Mokgosi, among others. His book, The Personalization of the Museum Visit, was published by Routledge in May 2019. In 2020 he won the Rabkin Arts Journalism Prize and in 2022 the Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. He is also a curator of contemporary art and has co-curated Get in the Game, a show on sports that is the largest exhibition that SFMoMA has undertaken.

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In the modern tradition of abstract art, artists look beyond what we physically see. Using color, shape, line, and texture, they express strong emotional content without constraints of representation. With her bold colors and brushstroke Annette Hur deliberately positions her paintings in between abstraction and figuration, dealing with the conflicts of the real lived experience and how her body remembers and processes it. “Anchoring to nothing, my ever-flowing identity as an immigrant female”
Courtesy of Artist | 

In the modern tradition of abstract art, artists look beyond what we physically see. Using color, shape, line, and texture, they express strong emotional content without constraints of representation. With her bold colors and brushstroke, Annette Hur deliberately positions her paintings in between abstraction and figuration, dealing with the conflicts of the real lived experience and how her body remembers and processes it.

“Anchoring to nothing, my ever-flowing identity as an immigrant female in the United States created the journey to investigate my self-perception, longing and belonging. The urge to release myself from the past traumas conflicts with the yearning for home and the loved ones who are no longer with me. This collision between reality, dreams, and desires resonates through layers of violent hues of colors and boundless yet determined brushstrokes. Water-in nature- as a universally symbolic capricious element, operates as a metaphor for perpetual journeys and reflecting the passing of time.”

Artist Talk: Annette Hur

Tuesday, October 15, 2024

The Korea Society
350 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor
New York, NY 10017

About the Artist:

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National Museum of Korea; Cultural Heritage Administration | 

In this lecture, Professor Sunglim Kim explores various metalwares and decorative arts throughout the history of the Korean peninsula, and craftsmanship and techniques used to create them.

The Korea Society
350 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor
New York, NY 10017

About the Speaker:

Sunglim Kim is an associate professor of Korean art and culture at Dartmouth College. She specializes in the material and consumer culture of the late Joseon period and women artists in modern and contemporary Korea.

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Images courtesy of the artists | 

Firing clay has been amongst the few mediums to have persevered through thousands of years. Three contemporary ceramic artists pursue their own exploration with clay while reshaping the tradition. Transcending the stereotype of the medium, Janny Baek, Steven Young Lee, and Sunkoo Yuh offer new perspectives shaped by cultural and social influences and reflect the shifting emphasis within the practice of ceramic art.

In this conversation, three artists discuss their work and career, and the group exhibition at The Korea Society.

Artist Talk | Three Clay Artists

Thursday, October 12, 2023
Video release

Images courtesy of the artist | 

In her HAN IN TOWN series, Janice Chung captures what was once the epicenter of the Koreatown in New York City—Flushing, Queens—and focuses on the various businesses that have continued to serve the Korean-American community through all of the neighborhood’s transformations. By spotlighting these businesses, Chung investigates communal nostalgia for a Flushing of the past.

Her other series Where Are You? uncovers a vulnerable search for identity and belonging within the intimate spaces of family. Documented over the course of five years, photographs taken in her hometown of Queens weave together the places of Chung’s childhood. Viewers are asked to take a second glance and remain just a while longer in the generational gaps and cultural tensions felt by Korean Americans.

Chung, one of the two photographers featured in The Korea Society’s Koreatown LA/NY, talks about her career and work.

Artist Talk: Janice Chung

Thursday, July 6, 2023
Video release

Images courtesy of the artist | 

Emanuel Hahn‘s Koreatown Dreaming series was born out of a sense of urgency to document the stories of Koreatown LA during the Covid-19 pandemic and creeping gentrification. Although Koreatown is increasingly a popular destination for tourists and transplants, many small businesses in Koreatown serving the local population are closing, and long-time establishments and mom-and-pop stores have disappeared without leaving a record of their history and contributions to the city of Los Angeles. Documenting the lives and stories of those who are still surviving, his photo series offers a compelling insight into this entrepreneurial immigrant group.

Hahn, one of the two photographers featured in The Korea Society’s Koreatown LA/NY, talks about his career and work.

Artist Talk: Emanuel Hahn

Thursday, June 1, 2023
Video release

Tiger with Two Cubs and Two Magpies, Late Joseon Dynasty (18th or 19th Century), Mattielli Collection. Image courtesy of jstor.org | 

In this lecture, Professor Sunglim Kim explores Korean folk painting, minhwa, and examines its origin and development, the different genres within it, and their meanings and functions. She will also illustrate how minhwa paintings were consumed by Koreans in the past and the present.

Minhwa
Korean Paintings of the People, by the People, and for the People
by Sunglim Kim

Wednesday, April 5, 2023 | 6:30 PM (EDT)

The Korea Society
350 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor
New York, NY 10017

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:

Sunglim Kim is an associate professor of Korean art and culture at Dartmouth College. She specializes in the material and consumer culture of the late Joseon period and women artists in modern and contemporary Korea.