The Korean Cultural Center, Los Angeles (KCCLA) held an event with 6 Korean-American Artists.

The artists featured in this exhibition have been part of the contemporary art movement ranging from 30 to 50 years in the United States. They came to the United States as immigrants that time period and fought through the inequalities and hardships that come with immigrant life. They were able to become successful artists only through perseverance and an unfathomable passion for art. What makes these 6 artists particularly special is that when we engage ourselves with their works, one can feel the Eastern heritage within their Western contemporary pieces. Some of the works of the artists have been purchased by museums and collectors for its outstanding character and some have even been featured in Hollywood films. These 6 artists have been eating, sleeping and breathing contemporary art and the reason for this exhibition is to recognize and honor their inextinguishable passion for art.

 

■ Participating Artists

 

AHN Young Il

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Water68x168 in Oil on Canvas, 2008

 

30years ago, I was trapped and lost at the sea four hours in a fog so thick that I couldn’t find the horizon. I was terrified and helpless and so lonely in a fragile little fishing boat just like that time of my life.

… And I saw the horizon! I was overwhelmed and thrilled to see such great scenery and humbled. There is everything I searched as an artist, greatness of space and colors and movement of sight. Since that day I am trying to express my experience of that moment in water series. As time pass it became deeper and deeper to my inner state.

 

 

HYUN Hei Myung C.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hado Mixed Media 12x12inch, 2010    

 

This push and pull between cultures manifests itself in the work. Abstraction and figuration, East and West, tradition and modernity: these tensions are re-created in my work through the use of varied visual tools and compositional structures found in both Eastern and Western art. The grids, scrims, patches of color, and symbols of the natural world that appear in my work necessarily do so in a fragmentary way, for they signify the spatial shifts of time involved in culling microcosmic glimpses of my daily experience.       

 

 

KANG Tae Ho

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sublime-1065 Oil on canvas 50inx75in, 2010                        

 

As a whole, the series of forty-five paintings resembles a time-lapse of photographic sequence of a day in the life of an ocean. Moments frozen in time capture the sudden and temporary beauty of an endless process of crest and break, of surge and regeneration. It’s a lovely metaphor for the stages of life, for the process of perception: grasp beauty, acknowledge it, and revel in it when you can, it’s elusive as a fish.   

 

 

KIM So Moon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Motherhood 07A  Indian Ink Acrylic on canvas 89 inx176in, 2007

 

Painting is my everyday work and a process of expressing my whole being. I meditate during the work, and put all my feelings and mental energy at the tip of my brush.  For the goals of my life, I pursue peace, harmony, and love. And the most important theme of my painting is love. I believe love can be found in all races regardless of their nationality and religion.

 

 

KIM Whi Boo

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Geo Series 2009 A Mixed Media 42 in x 96 in., 2009

 

Whi Boo Kim explains, as “line, form, and space meet, mix and bend, tension is relaxed, and gap penetrates deeply into the screen, and a number of strata cracks are bound to appear.”  This process is what creates the “archeological image” and “texture like fossil” in his work.  He expresses his recurring thoughts of the pyramid, as “the safest geometrical structure” and his dreams of “unity of the earth and heaven.”  He also states the summary of his work as “texture is painting, form is sculpture, and process is architecture” deeply resonates with his Geo Series because he believes it summarizes “human life itself”.

 

YOO Jae Hwa

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Desert Series 10-1 Acrylic on canvas 70inx70in, 2010 

 

The forms of the mind and of the natural world, as they are perceived, are inter-functional and interdependent, and I want to address this through a sense of presence in the paintings, that is, I wish my works to be interpreted not as products of composition or methodology, but more as occurrences, objects, and presences. But these presences are intended neither as renderings of sense impressions nor as projected states of mind but rather as primordial evocations of states of being, both real and imagined.