Stick and Move

Description

Focusing on the most innovative and broadly recognized Asian artists who have not yet exhibited widely in the United States, “Stick and Move” refers to the growing mobility of artists from all cultures, both physically and in the ideas they explore. More specifically, the exhibition is a survey of promising talents of Indian, Malaysian, Japanese and South Korean decent.

Sangeeta Sandrasegar, a former resident of Melbourne, Australia, currently resides in London and makes use of traditional Indian imagery (such as a feminist redux Durgha goddess holding a severed head) in paper cuts (with shadow play) and installations that explore increasingly pan-cultural themes. Paiman points a razor whit at politics in southeast Asia by skewering those in power with their own proclamations, superimposed on childlike satirical drawings. Hiroyuki Nakamura, of Japanese extraction and living in Brooklyn, lovingly mocks the American cowboy and worships the amputee in cuddly images that point at violence and disillusionment, even as they beg for a chuckle. And young South Korean artist Yoo Seung-ho venerates traditional ink brush painting, even when every apparent brushstroke is revealed as part of his own large lexicon of written words, allowing every painting to read both visually and as a literary work.

Wherever they live at present and whatever their ethnic origins, the most savvy 21st century artists often play with conflicting currents of meaning related to Western and non-Western traditions of art making. Current geo-political events offer a battleground where oil and water can work in conflict and deep blending cultural tropes can attempt interminglements. These young artists display a cosmopolitan breadth of knowledge in their work, one that defies any geographically based curatorial category (hence this is not our Asian Invitational II). This refusal to be pigeon-holed is exactly the kind of art that is resilient to characterization and thereby asserts its own longevity – “Stick and Move” highlights artists at play in a world full of meanings that grow out of an almost limitless variety of inspirations.

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Link

http://www.freynorris.com