ART14: EMERGE

  • Artists: Yingmei Duan, Junebum Park, Sungfeel Yun
  • Olympia Grand Hall | London, W14 8UX
  • 27 February - 2 March 2014
  • www.artfairslondon.com

Hanmi Gallery is pleased to announce its participation in EMERGE, Art14 showcasing a group exhibition of three international artists Yingmei Duan, Junebum Park and Sungfeel Yun. Featuring new media and installation works, the exhibition ‘Set in Motion’ explores the intricate and dynamic ideas of ceaseless movement in both the physical, and conceptual realms of current global contemporary art practices. The interest and range of mediums employed by the three artists display the relentless speed and variations operate in ‘movements’ of contemporary artistic practices.

 

Yingmei Duan’s Talk to Myself (2002) depicts the artist restlessly sweeping leaves in a garden as she continually talks to herself in her mother tongue Chinese. Within her performances she crosses mediums, at times incorporating sound, video and installation. She often spontaneously develops performances as situational experiments, drawing close to connecting with everyday life. Duan is an enthusiastic collaborator, working with people from diverse cultures and local communities. Leitmotifs of human instincts such as fear and desire feature at the core of her works.

A member of the avant-garde East Village art community in Beijing – Duan participated in To Add One Meter to an Anonymous Mountain (1995), a seminal performance work in the present narrative of ‘Contemporary Chinese Art’. In 1998 she moved to Germany, studying at the HBK Braunschweig with Marina Abramovic and Christoph Schlingensief. Duan’s works have been in included in numerous international exhibitions including ‘Body & Eros’ the 52nd Venice Biennale (2007), ‘Art of Change: New Directions from China’, Hayward Gallery (2012), and the Sydney Biennale (2014).

 

Junebum Park engages in a visual discussion on the restraints of routine, confines of a set societal structure, and the expected submission into roles within these realms. The (in)visible hand of society on individuals and communities becomes apparent where cultural conflicts are all attended to. The artist places particular consideration into his home country South Korea and East Asia. By photographing and rearranging commodities and people, Park evokes these pressures, manipulating the hand himself. The fast-forwarded and controlled worlds created in Park’s works display the unsettling and automative realities of daily life.

Park has exhibited and held international artist residencies at the Liverpool Biennale (2010), BizArt Center, Shanghai (2005), Schinkel, Berlin (2006), Chinese Arts Centre, Manchester (2011), and Artspace, Sydney (2013). He was the recipient of the SIA Media Art Award (2012) and the Grant for International Exchange of Art and Culture, Arts Council Korea (2011). Junebum Park’s works are held in public and private collections worldwide including the Zabludowicz Collection (UK), Leeum Samsung Museum of Art (Korea), Gyeonggi Museum of Art (Korea), and Microsoft Art Collection (USA).

 

Sungfeel Yun embraces the scientific and ontological as a framework for realising subtle yet energetic sculptural works.  Presented in simplified, almost industrial aesthetic, Yun captures the mystery and pursues the boundaries of metaphysical thoughts. Avoiding the superfluous and flamboyant so as not to obscure the density of these vast concepts, Yun suggests that ancient philosophies and scientific theories are not as far removed from each other as we believe. His fascination with this subject began with painful episodes of bronchial asthma attacks during his childhood. In these fatalistic moments, Yun became preoccupied with the deceptively simple age-old question, ‘What am I?’, which remains a pivotal theme in his works.

Sungfeel Yun studied Eastern philosophies and religions, namely Buddhism and Taoism. Yun holds MFA from Slade School of Fine Art and BA from Goldsmith College. Yun is the recipient of Special Award from National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea (2006) and Seoul Art Award Exhibition from Seoul Museum of Art (2005). Yun features in the Saatchi Gallery New Sensation’s 50 Long List (2013) and the Caitlin Guide’s 40 Selected Artists (2014).

 

Yingmei Duan at Art14 Performances

Following the success of last year, Art14 will host Art14 Performancesa platform for performance at the Fair in partnership with the Zabludowicz Collection. Hanmi Gallery is pleased to present Yingmei Duan’s performance installation Patience (2004) – an experimentation of the separation of body and mind, in which the performer becomes the living sculpture as well as an active observer of its audience. Patience is born out of Duan’s own observations and emotive responses to the expressive bodies in the works of Egon Schiele, where she perceived the artist to be struggling a futile fight between love and desire. Patience will take place in Art14 at the following times: 11am-1pm 28Feb, 1 Mar & 2Mar.