AP Space is honored to present an expanded collection of works by several artists featured since the gallery's opening last October. With an ever-growing roster of artists, this exhibition has been meticulously curated to both reintroduce and debut artworks by Ha Taeim, Hyong Nam Ahn, Yong-Ha Park, Soojung Park, Choi Young Wook, Yoon Byung Rock, Cho Hyun Seo, and MOKU.
One of the purposes of AP SPACE is to honor artists like Moku, also known as Kwangmo Ku, who began his artistic journey at the age of fifty in South Korea, initially facing recognition challenges due to his lack of formal education. Even though his talent was soon discovered to exhibit in Europe, his health condition did not support his last wish to show in New York. AP SPACE turned this story around by taking on this mission to create a space for artists like Moku to continue their legacy. As Moku said, “Every being in the moment is precious and beautiful. However, all of them would disappear.”
First opening with Ha Taeim, a renowned female Asian Modern & Contemporary painter from South Korea, her works have been offered at auction multiple times. Ha Taeim’s signature overlapping color bands as she unfolds her world in a rhythmic sense like a passage of music, is not only visually striking but also sings a powerful message of self empowerment that invites the viewers to explore their own inner selves in new and meaningful ways.
While Ha Taeim explores the inner universe within oneself, Hyong Nam Ahn, a mixed media artist known for his sculptures that combine lights, sounds, and movements, explores the impact of technology on human relationships and the universe remaining unchanged. Inspired by Kinetic Art in the 1960s, Ahn’s fascination with the ever-changing nature of the environment explores the impact of technology on human relationships and the universe.
On the other hand, Soojung Park involves nature, specifically sunlight, as a complementing medium to her inked plexiglasses. Park captures the essence of stillness in the midst of movement within her subjects by the usage of traditional techniques with mediums such as ink and pigment, where she sands and rubs shades onto both front and back of plexiglass surface. Therefore, when the sunlight hits, the glistening colors create a sense of seeing the unseen, contrasting with what is actually there.
Serving nature not only as a medium, but also as a muse, a Korean artist Yong-Ha Park blends fine sand, gold dust, and stone powders to add tactile quality to his artworks. He titles all of his works as Thou to be Seen Tomorrow, which comes from his father’s reminder to him to always create for yourself tomorrow. Park’s unique style truly brings the traditional mud-plastered walls of Korean rural houses to life.
Another interpretation of an inner mind, as artist Choi Young Wook portrays in his moon jar forms, which he dedicated himself to refining over the past fifteen years, defines his paintings as images of memories and medium of communication. Calling it the Karma series, the intricate lines inside the moon jars are drawn by pencil to indicate the fragility as well as the possibilities of human relationships. The abstract creation of a moon jar intertwines East Asian tradition with the expressive ethos of Western modern painting, utilizing his technique and style as a conduit for this fusion.
Yoon Byung Rock paints apples, where he uses them as formative elements to bring out the viewer’s own memories associated with apples by showing them from a bird's eye’s view to portray the depth of space. Throughout the years, Yoon has developed his own shaped canvases to paint his apples with the idea of pursuing something different, specifically by drawing still lifes “in a composition that should be avoided to prove that bad composition could result in a good painting,” said by the artist.
Furthermore, Cho Hyun Seo focuses on the complexity of human to human relationship with a concept of the ‘the hedgehog’s dilemma’. It’s an analogy to describe how despite the intention of reciprocal interactions, sometimes it’s better to keep the distance, similar to when a group of hedgehogs get close to one another to share heat during winter, they only end up hurting each other with their sharp quills. This can be seen in her threaded works, showing contrasting ego-states of an adult and a child to portray the relationship between a person and another, and her and herself.
