"Kismet" Awarded in Gallery Art Competition

I was very excited to receive news that my large-scale painting, Kismet, was awarded a Special Recognition in the All Women Art Competition, sponsored by the Light, Space & Time Gallery.

The painting will be a part of an exhibition that will be up during the month of February 2013. You can check out my work and the work of other very talented artists here. 

NOWHERE/NOW HERE Art Show

I'm excited to announce the opening of the NOWHERE/NOW HERE show at the Harbor Art Gallery. The exhibition showcases a wide range of artists who work in different mediums: digital and traditional photography, painting, print, sculpture and video installation. All of the works explore the theme of space & place.

The show opens today and it will be up until February 7, 2013. The gallery is open from Monday-Thursday, 1-7 pm. 

The reception is on Wednesday, January 30, from 5-8. And you're all invited! 

Here is the final line-up of artists for the show: 

KC Evitts: Transience, oil painting

Susan Tan: The Order in Random, photography 

Carrie Savage: Three Years and Two Months, photography 

Rashelle Brown: Welcome Home, photography 

Nicole Bousquet: Untitled, charcoal drawing 

Gwen Vitti: The Last Drop, sculpture 

Eunah Bang: Kor-glish, sculpture 

Amanda Wild: Multiverse, silk print 

Minhae Shim: Video Sassoon, new media installation

Special thanks to: 

Ann Torke: Advisor 

Kevin Benisvy: Director, Harbor Art Gallery

Daniel Roth: Creative Consultant for Video Sassoon

If you get a chance to go, please let us know your thoughts: minhae.shim@gmail.com 

Nobody Puts Minhae In the Nook

"NOBODY PUTS MINHAE IN THE NOOK" is a phrase coined playfully by my friend, Amanda Wild, as we were discussing the logistics of setting up our show, Nowhere/Now Here, at the Harbor Art Gallery. 

As a video artist and an artist who is interested in using and exploring media, I've noticed that displaying my work presents a distinct set of complications. For the upcoming show, I'll be exhibiting a new media installation, titled Video Sassoon. The work is a multimedia experience that has sculptural, audio, and video elements. Below is a statement about the work: 

"Video Sassoon is a phantasmagorical meditation on media, remediation, and the editing process. Discarded strips of videotape are repurposed to create a screen through which a digital video is projected. In the video, newly severed pieces of hair float across the screen to the tune of a familiar funeral ballad that has been rendered unrecognizable by the editing process. The work uses the inescapably human material of hair to comment on the omnipresence of media and its evolution, and to connect video editing to a familiar, tactile experience." 

So where does a piece like this, and other video or media works, go within the space of a gallery or a museum? The Harbor Art Gallery has a "nook" in the far left of the gallery. It's an enclosed space made of temporary walls within the gallery itself. During discussions of which artist will display where, the running joke was that my work "was perfect for the nook." And we'll be going to put the show up tomorrow morning in fact, so I'll make sure to document the set-up process. 

Scholars who study digital media, such as Christiane Paul, are aware of the issues of new media exhibition and are actively engaged in the problem-solving process for displaying works of new media: "New media art seems to call for a distributed, 'living' information space that is open to artistic interference - a space for exchange, collaborative creation and presentation that is transparent and flexible." 

Video Sassoon is a piece that needs space to be displayed and experienced. I'm sure that there will be challenges in the installation and exhibition process in the video nook, but I'm also excited to see how the exhibition space itself will transform and contribute to the work. 

The above photographs were from the initial projection test. More photos and info about the final installed piece, and the show, to come. 

Transport: Video vs. Painting

I mostly work in digital media, so I encountered a novel challenge this new year's week when I had to transport my 60" x 60" surrealist painting (which also weighs about 20 pounds) from the studio to its new home. Seeing at this painting is just about my height, I enlisted Danny's help in moving it. (More photos of the painting, entitled Kismet, coming later)

We had originally planned to take it on the T, knowing very well that we would be objects of disdain in a crowded train. When we went out to dinner and explained our plan to friends, they suggested that we rent a van instead (thanks Ta-Wei and Erica!).

Moving the painting in a big van was less painful than taking it on the T, but it was certainly more challenging that transporting video files. The physicality of a painting (paint, canvas, wood) and its presence in a specific place complicates the transport of a painting.

The heaviest things used to transport video are a hard drive and perhaps a laptop. Video files are also often moved over networks and the internet. Of course, there's the issue of film/video production equipment. However, pieces of equipment are smaller and more easily packed than a relatively fragile 5' x 5' painting.

While transporting painting is (usually) a more involved process than transporting video files, exhibition of painting vs. video is certainly another story, which I'll address in another post. 

New Year's Eve: Reflecting and Revisiting

The new year approaches quickly and with it comes sentimental and philosophical reflections about the past, hopes for the future, lamentations, goals, wishes. It the time when everyone looks back on what they have or have not done and thinks.

To pseudo follow the trend, I wanted to revisit a theme that I had posted about earlier this year: graffiti vs. aerosol art. While traveling recently with my partner Danny, we happened to stumble upon two spectacular works of what would technically be called aerosol art.

The two works we found were on perpendicular walls. The content of the two works were different (faces vs. cars), but the colors and forms seemed to borrow from each other.

The works weren't found in an arts district or any specified place. We just happened to stumble upon them.

We also created a video in front of the car mural: 

I suppose things that have caught our eyes or attentions before always have the ability to catch them again. Right now, I'm in the process of sorting through photographs from our XC road trip this summer in preparation for our next project. It's interesting how things that surprised and delighted us during that voyage continue to do so now. As artists, we're reflecting on 2012 in our own way, visually. 

Happy New Year! See you in 2013! 

Funk Lessons

GET DOWN AND PARTY. TOGETHER.

That was the mission statement of artist Adrian Piper's collaborative performances that were entitled Funk Lessons. While the piece itself is older in terms of contemporary art (the performances took place in 1982-1984), it addresses ideas and notions that are quite relevant to society and culture today.

In Funk Lessons, Piper stages and leads a series of performances in which she taught white people how to listen and dance to Funk music. As a woman who had grown up in in both white and black culture, Piper created the piece to unite both communities and both parts of her identity.

Piper writes in her Notes on Funk I-II, that the piece gave her a chance to "explore and affirm the cultural dimensions of my identity as black...at the same time...to affirm and utilize the conventions and idioms of communications...in white culture...These modes of fluency reinforce my sense of identification with my audience and ultimately empower all of us to move with greater ease and fluidity from one such mode to another."

Though I'm someone who doesn't completely fit into either black or white culture, I find this piece thought-provoking and inclusive. What Piper strives to do is to break down feelings of shame or awkwardness that are the result of not belonging to a particular culture or community. The piece enables the "other" to be able to navigate and jump into another culture in an accepting and culturally-enhancing way.

The above video quality is not pristine, but it should give you a sense of how the piece worked and how it was received. You can also check out the page on her website, which has a cleaner video (but can only be viewed on her site).

Graffiti vs. Aerosol Art

I was watching television the other day when I heard the term "aerosol art" used. Is what was formerly called graffiti now known as aerosol art?

Graffiti in Brazil

It turns out that there is a difference between graffiti and aerosol art, and I suppose that the show I was watching was trying to highlight the legality of aerosol art (versus the illegality of graffiti).

Perrier aerosol art by Steffi Bow and Sya One

The Minnesota Daily makes a concise distinction between the two. Graffiti is the tagging or illegal marking on private or public property. It's word origins are from the Greek graphein, which means "to write." Aerosol Art, however, is legal spray painting that is done in public spaces, canvases or other surfaces.

The first graffiti shop in Russia. 

So, it seems the distinction is a matter of semantics. One is legal, the other is not. One has been accepted in the realms of the museum and the gallery. The other is still seem as a demarcator of crime that brings down property values. And so this brings us back to the old debate: what is art? As seen here, it is a matter of words that can distinguish between what can be regaled as art and what can be dismissed as trash. Isn't that quite a thin line?

Stencil graffiti by Banksy in Bristol. 

MPC Distribution Seminar: Good Men Project

This past Saturday, I went to the Massachusetts Production Coalition's seminar on film distribution. Despite the snow, the turnout was impressive. All the conversations and contributions by the panelists were interesting and I was sure to feverishly take notes on all the information disseminated.

Social media expert Lisa Hickey's talk about the Good Men Project especially caught my attention. Hickey told the story of how her media company, Good Men Media, Inc., the for-profit section of the Good Men Project (originally founded by Tom Matlack and James Houghton in 2009) was conceived.

After an unsuccessful merge between her advertising company and another a few years ago, Hickey found herself "out on the street" with nothing but a good idea, relentless enthusiasm and faith in the power of social media. The circumstances afforded her the opportunity to create the hugely successful Good Men Media, Inc., an online and print publication which "is a glimpse of what enlightened masculinity might look like in the 21st century" (Source). The tagline of the refreshing publication is, "What does it mean to be a good man?"

I was encouraged by Lisa's positive attitude and honesty about her journey. She explicitly stated during the two-hour seminar that filmmakers "should not go out an hire a social media person," adding humorously, "unless you're way over budget!" She encouraged a DIY attitude for filmmakers and inspired a sense of self-reliance that merges her two loves of "art and math."

I encourage you to check out the website for the Good Men Project. The publication is creating and encouraging intellectual, topical and relevant conversations about contemporary notions of masculinity. The project and its publications are a rare and necessary addition to the modern collection of male-focused print media. 

Madama Butterfly

A few weeks ago, I completed a new painting, which I titled Xtra (above). The piece focused on using paint as a means of illustration. It was an exploration in uniting two different disciplines, painting and illustration, which I often practice separately. Each of these artmaking modes has its own materials and mindsets, and I worked in this piece to marry the two.

Days later, I was on the T (the MBTA's red line, if you're wondering). I was outbound, and already tired. I looked up and was confronted with the image that's on the right: the promotional poster for Puccini's Madama Butterfly, the new production by the Boston Lyric Opera.

I have juxtaposed the two images of my painting and this promotional poster above. I was so surprised to encounter this image of Madame Butterfly. My painting, done days before I had even seen this image, was a shocking echo of the poster. And they had never even met. I, the medium, had not been overtly inspired by an image, and yet, here it was. The works may have well been sisters, birthed from the same mind.

This encounter makes me think about the flexibility of creativity and inspiration. How intricately are ideas, experiences and the environment connected? We are constantly influenced by subconscious sensory experiences and desires, and I suppose it is in art that they manifest themselves. I'm still curious as to how I got the inspiration for Xtra...the painting was, after all, more of an exercise in form rather than content. Of course, the whole situation may be happenstance...Or, perhaps the image of a woman with thick black tears dripping down her face is actually quite common.

Artist Humor - thanks, Stephen Colbert!

Stephen Colbert ponders the all so important question that artists and art historians have debated for years.

Read Colbert's lengthy discussion that aired on The Colbert Report (November 8, 2012) below and/or watch here.

"Tonight. What is art? 

It's a 3-letter word for disappointing your parents."