Fertile Ground

Fertile Ground

May 4th through May 28th, 2017

Location: Ray Gallery, 55 Washington St #721, Brooklyn, NY 11201

Hours: Mon, Tues 12-6PM & by appointment

Curators: Eun Young Choi & Inkook Choi

Assistant Curator: So-Ok Park

Artists: Tai Hwa Goh & Yeon Ji Yoo

Opening Reception: Thursday, May 4th, 2017 6-8PM

Additional events: Dumbo Open Studio (May 13 & 14)

The AHL Foundation and Ray Gallery are pleased to present Fertile Ground, a co-curated exhibition by Inkook Choi and Eun Young Choi.

Fertile Ground will showcase the works of two Korean-American artists Tai Hwa Goh and Yeon Ji Yoo who address re-imagined memories and the cycle of life through powerful and compelling site-specific installations. Goh and Yoo have very distinctive approaches of expression; yet collectively touch upon subject matters of memories, accumulations, and sense of loss. The multi-layered material buildup used in the installations reflect growth and abundance as well as the cyclical displacement of life which once again become nourishment for regrowth.

Tai Hwa Goh creates delicately layered installation from printed and cut paper. Her imagery evokes biological forms and landscape, reflecting on the accumulation of memory and experience, and the interior and exterior worlds of the human body. She constructs tubes, pipes, and balls brimming with fluid-like stands of paper as a metaphor for the cycle of the body, industrial machinery and natural phenomena, as well as the endless processes of growth and decay.

Yeon Ji Yoo’s wooded landscapes have the presence of dust and dirt signifying the process of aging and decomposition. Yoo’s reimagined landscape comes from the history of her motherland evoking a sense of loss and pain of the post-war condition yet retains a dreamlike quality. Yoo believes smells and textures, sounds and images trigger the recurrence of a memory like the wind that shifts stale air trapped inside a drawer closed for a long time. Like a time portal, the private grove of trees and seeds seem to usher in things that were forgotten long ago.