Calvin Klein’s Seoul Surprise - Jean Shin
December 07, 2009 Women's Wear Daily
Excerpt–
Calvin Klein Collection is about to make a major fashion statement in Seoul, with the help of two art insiders.
The spring women’s and men’s lines will be showcased Thursday as installations at the Kring Creative Culture Space, with Korean-American artist Jean Shin doing the honors for the women’s collection and British curator Neville Wakefield creating one for the men’s. Shin was commissioned to design one of her monumental installations that draws upon the women’s offerings...
–Rosemary Feitelberg
Where I Work: Richard Tsao
November 01, 2009 Art Asia Pacific
Excerpt–
Tsao’s methods—spontaneous action, momentary deliberation and prolonged incubation—mean that any given work gestates for up to three years before the artist deems it complete... Having finally achieved a certain compositional “tension”—the planes of pink, blue, white, green or orange conversing with each other in transparent layers—Tsao might finally chip off dense portions of calcified pigment with a small hammer. It seems that such works have been ultimately pried clean of some sublime tropical, or lunar, geography.
– Gregory Galligan
For full review
volume 5, issue 5
Profile: Pouran Jinchi
October 01, 2009 Canvas
Pouran Jinchi's profile by Ladan Akbarnia in the current issue of Canvas, the premier art and culture magazine published in Dubai.
Excerpt–
With a diverse artistic repertoire that includes works in a variety of media and sizes, including paintings, sculptures and video installations, Pouran Jinchi is very much a product of the modern age. Yet much of her inspiration is drawn from the ancient traditions of her Iranian heritage, serving to underline the complexity of Diasporic art and highlight the enduring power of identity and belonging..... What gives Jinchi's work her signature style is the way she manages to synthesize historical and cultural strands and imbue them with a highly personal skill and character.
–Ladan Akbarnia
For a complete copy of this article please contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
Painting with Paper Mates - IL Lee
August 07, 2009 Pasatiempo (The Santa Fe New Mexican)
IL LEE: Ballpoint Drawings at Gebert Contemporary is reviewed in the cover article of Pasatiempo, The Santa Fe New Mexican's Weekly Magazine of Arts, Entertainment & Culture, August 7-13, 2009.
Excerpt–
One of the most striking aspects of Il Lee's ballpoint drawings is how he manages to convey a great sense of depth using only one color applied to either canvas or paper in a seemingly uninterrupted flow. One work, titled MBL-020, draws your attention from the loose, flowing, gestural lines at the left side to the dense and dark area on the right side that seems to recede into distance. The scale — the piece is 41.5 by 30 inches — is large enough that, standing before it, one has the sense of being at the mouth of a cave. Conversely, the density Lee achieves with the ink he uses in MBL-020 gives the image the appearance of being a near-solid mass, so his drawing seems to shift between the objective and the nonobjective, or between the figurative and the purely abstract. It might be more accurate to say that this drawing, as well as many in Lee's show at Gebert Contemporary's Railyard location, shifts between representing being and representing emptiness or void space.
–Michael Abatemarco
For a complete copy of this article please contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
Museums: The Actually Cool Guide – Pouran Jinchi
July 30, 2009 Time Out New York
Excerpt–
Queens Museum of Art
The contemporary Middle Eastern and Central Asian works in the “Tarjama/Translation” exhibition mince no words when it comes to hot-button political issues (many of the featured artists hail from Iraq, Iran, Palestine, Afghanistan and Lebanon). Especially moving is Pouran Jinchi’s Tajvid Red, hand-copied ink on a paper scroll, faithful to the Koran in every way except that it’s missing all of its Arabic consonants; and the 130 deliciously pretty acrylic pastries that make up the dead man’s chalk line in Farhad Moshiri’s Chocline.
For a complete copy of this article please contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
Iran Inside Out - Pouran Jinchi
July 23, 2009 The New York Times
Art in Review
Chelsea Art Museum
Excerpt–
In a group exhibition with 56 participants of different ages working in all kinds of mediums, coherence isn’t the first thing to look for, and you don’t find it in “Iran Inside Out.” What you do find is a high ratio of vigorous work by contemporary Iranian artists who live in their homeland or elsewhere. You get a sense of the cultural forces that have shaped those lives and continue to in this 30th-anniversary year of the Iranian revolution...
Often, though, inside-versus-outside is hard to discern at a glance. Almost all the artists here have a stake, in some way, in exploring what it means to be Iranian, and sometimes in the same way, no matter where they are. Golnaz Fathi, who lives in Tehran, walks the line between calligraphy and abstraction in his paintings; so does Pouran Jinchi, who lives in New York.
–Holland Cotter
For a complete copy of this article please contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
ART REVIEW
The Many Voices of Enlightment - Pouran Jinchi
June 12, 2009 The New York Times
Pouran Jinchi's "Prayer Stone 5" is currently on view in Light of the Sufis: The Mystical Arts of Islam at the Brooklyn Museum, and the show is reviewed by Holland Cotter in The New York Times.
Excerpt–
Few practitioners attain so radical a state of absorption. But the desire to find lightness of heart — to have old spirit-killing depressions and anxiety-causing attachments melted away — continues. Sufism is very much part of any full definition of Islam today. And today is where “Light of the Sufis” leaves us, with two contemporary works.
One, called “Prayer Stone 5,” is by Pouran Jinchi, an artist who was born in Iran and now lives in New York City. It consists of overlaid rubbings that Ms. Jinchi took of two carved stones in a Shia shrine in the holy city of Mashhad in Iran. One stone was inscribed with the name of Allah, the other with prayers for peace directed to a revered leader in the Shia line of spiritual succession.
In and around the lacelike patterns left by the rubbings, Ms. Jinchi has added something of her own: words from Muslim daily prayers written over and over in a minute calligraphic hand, their repetition being the physical equivalent of the Sufi practice of constantly reciting the names of God.
–Holland Cotter
For full review
NYT slide show
Because Everyone Deserves a Trophy - Jean Shin
April 08, 2009 The New York Times
Jean Shin: Common Threads at the Smithsonian American Art Museum is reviewed in The New York Times, April 8, 2009.
Excerpt–
Modeled on the protests and celebrations that erupt on the National Mall, Jean Shin’s latest installation — a roiling, shoulder-to-shoulder crowd in miniature — will carpet a 45-foot-long rectangular space at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington beginning May 1. The figures will be gleaming trophies, stripped of their sports paraphernalia and refashioned with new props into janitors, cashiers, mailmen and other unsung laborers, now pushing their strollers or swinging their hammers in exalted form.
Ms. Shin, who was commissioned by the museum to create the installation, “Everyday Monuments,” as part of her exhibition “Common Threads,” was inspired by Washington as a city planned around its heroic monuments. “I thought of these trophies as a way to bring the monumentality to a more intimate level,” said Ms. Shin, 37, an artist known for her vast accumulations of singular castoff objects — old clothing, empty prescription bottles, losing lottery tickets — which she transforms into arresting installations that loosely reflect the people who once used the items.
–Hilarie M. Sheets
For full review
NYT audio and slide show
Pouran Jinchi in Art Asia Pacific
March 05, 2009 Art Asia Pacific
Pouran Jinchi's 2008 exhibition Pouran Jinchi: A Survey at Art Projects International is reviewed by Gregory Galligan in Art Asia Pacific, March/April, 2009.
Pouran Jinchi's recent solo exhibition comprised a poetic decade long survey of her calligraphic abstraction from 1995-2005. A New York based painter of Iranian origin, Jinchi, born in 1959, demonstrated a consistently persuasive idiom of meditative reflection, one derived from the tradition of Islamic manuscript painting. Working primarily with the elegant nasta'liq script, a Persian adaptation of Arabic originating in the late 14th century, Jinchi renders single letters against ethereal fields of shimmering color, variously inscribed texture and abstract motifs of free-floating invention. She frequently multiplies a letter's structural form in serial or otherwise clustered formation, thereby suggesting a grounding in the lyrical and rhythmic recitation of Persian poetry. The existential maxims of the Ruba'iyat, an anthology of poems by the 11th-century Sufi astronomer and mathematician Omar Khayyam, often provide a conceptual springboard for her work.
In this second showing with Art Projects International, which was followed months later by a reprise of the show in reduced format at New York's Vilcek Foundation, the evolution of Jinchi's abstract syntax suggested a symbiosis between the artist's method and her minimalist format. A recurring principle of formal repetition speaks to her works' time based genesis, with the result that the perusal of their surfaces seems an act of reconstitution, or recovery of their poetic content from a state of preservation or repose not unlike how the reading of verses from the Qu'ran recalls their origins in a long tradition of oral recitation. This subtle, yet profoundly performative concept lies behind Jinchi's abstract repetition of letters, originating in Farsi, a Persian derivative and augmentation of the Arabic alphabet, or diacritical markings. For example, in her "Rubaiyat" series (1995-96) the 12th letter of the Arabic alphabet, sin, is distributed across a sheet of paper in such systematic fashion that its effect recalls the poured or dripped paint in a canvas by Jackson Pollock. In these works, individual letters seem woven into lace like patterns from the upper to the lower portions of the support; in others, letters are distributed evenly across the work's surface as though collectively constituting gossamer scrims or two dimensional traceries.
In five works from an untitled series (1999-2000), abstract portions of script accumulate like fallen leaves in the lower two corners of the canvas. Here Jinchi's formerly rigorous, conceptual format has given way to a mood far more playful, as letters take on a virtually sculptural dimension. This spirited tendency is furthered in an untitled "Antwork" series (2001), in which ants, whose bodies Jinchi builds with fragments of calligraphy, are marshaled into meandering lines, their migrations of acrylic and ink neatly traversing the otherwise pristine canvas.
It has become common to applaud Jinchi for successfully synthesizing certain Eastern and Western traditions, namely Islamic calligraphy and Abstract Expressionism. But on closer inspection, the justification of Jinchi's achievement by reference to the New York School seems superficial, indeed serving only to state the obvious affinities between any cursive calligraphy and gestural abstraction. In fact, Jinchi's mystical aesthetic is traceable to the abstract tradition of qit'a, an Islamic pictorial genre based in the word or verse fragment, and originating in the late 15th century. Qit'a was an art intended primarily for visual delectation, the discrete fragments of verse sometimes revealing themselves as gibberish if one attempted to read them. To cite such an august heritage is hardly to diminish Jinchi's original and compelling riff on this intrinsically Middle Eastern mode of abstract eloquence.
– Gregory Galligan
Royal Taste in Art Put on Display - Pouran Jinchi
November 17, 2008 The National, UAE
Excerpt–
Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, the Crown Prince of AbuDhabi, will open the door to the Royal Family's private art collection for the first time this week.
The exhibition, on Tuesday at the Sea Palace, the private residence of the Crown Prince, is part of a three-day Collectors Programme of events aimed at creating a dialogue between the western art world and the Middle East.........
Works from prominent UAE artists, such as Hassan Sharif and Abdul Kadir al Rais are on display, along with pieces from Iranian artists such as Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, and a striking scroll by Pouran Jinchi, in which verses from the Quran have been copied in green ink.
– Karen Attwood
For a complete copy of this article please contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
Nanoscale and Painting - Filipe Rocha da Silva
August 01, 2008 Leonardo, MIT Press
Leonardo, Vol. 41, No. 3
MIT Press, 2008
Abstract–
Filipe Rocha da Silva creates very large paintings depicting extremely small, almost invisible figures. In "Nanoscale and Painting" he tries to explain why he does so and considers the possible relationship of these works to nanoscale phenomena and technology, which have been so influential in the 21st century.
For a complete copy of this article please contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
Lost in Transliteration - Pouran Jinchi
March 01, 2008 Ctrl+P Journal of Contemporary Art
Excerpt–
Looking at text markings in a different culture is Pouran Jinchi, an Iranian-American artist living in New York. She trained in calligraphy in childhood, but after completing her studies in civil engineering, she turned to painting, influenced by the abstract expressionists. Her works involve the subtraction of text from identified and identifiable sections that retains context. She states, “In Farsi and Arabic, the punctuation markings are hardly used any more. The Koran is the perfect example of retaining and emphasizing the diacritical markings like the, tasheed, saken, and hamzeh. People who are familiar with the Koran, even from different cultures, like African and Chinese Muslims, can recognize the Koran in my paintings even when the text is removed because of these markings. They are like mathematical notations. To me, mathematical equations looked like art, like vocalizations. Visually they look the same to me.”
– Kóan Jeff Baysa
For a complete copy of this article please contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
Pouran Jinchi in Time Out Dubai
January 17, 2008 Time Out Dubai
“Art & Culture”, Time Out Dubai, reproductions, January 17 - 24, 2008.
For a complete copy of this article please contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
IL LEE Ballpoint Drawings at the Queens Museum of Art
September 07, 2007 The New York Times
Queens Museum of Art
IL LEE: Ballpoint Drawings
A selection of drawings — striking indigo and black ink abstractions, all done exclusively in ballpoint pen, on paper and canvas — makes up this engrossing show by the veteran Korean artist Il Lee. The centerpiece is a 50-foot drawing that took two and a half months and 400 to 500 ballpoint pens to complete, with the artist working on sections at a time that were propped up against the wall in his Brooklyn studio. It is a sweeping, rhythmical abstraction in blue recalling the Italian Futurist paintings of Giacomo Balla, combined with elements of traditional Asian ink and wash painting.
– Benjamin Genocchio
A Few Good Pens - IL LEE
September 01, 2007 ARTnews
Excerpt––
For a quarter century, the South Korean-born artist has been coaxing massive webs of line from disposable ballpoint pens.... For his solo show "Ballpoint Drawings," on view at the Queens Museum of Art through the 30th of this month, Lee created his largest work yet: BL-090, a 5-by-50 foot installation that wraps around a curved wall.
– Lamar Clarkson
For a complete copy of this article please contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
To See the World in Ballpoint Pen - IL LEE
August 10, 2007 The New York Times
Excerpt––
What makes this work, and others like it, so alluring is its unexpected suggestiveness. When Mr. Lee's drawings conjure before you a soft, densely inked snowflakelike blob with feathery edges, or a pattern that recalls a distant constellation, or foliage, or even stones in a pool of clear, shallow water, it is hard not to be mesmerized. The simple, minimal forms are instinctively seductive.
– Benjamin Genocchio
For a complete copy of this article please contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
IL Lee - Queens Museum of Art
August 07, 2007 The New Yorker
“Il Lee.” Hundreds of thousands of disposable ballpoint pens have passed through the Korean-born, Brooklyn-based artist’s hands over the years, and he’s mastered his medium. He knows how the ink will warm to produce a free-flowing line; he’s learned how to build up shadow and leave room for light. His works, which integrate Sol LeWitt-style minimalism and sumukhwai, an Asian ink-painting tradition, range from small studies to a new, fifty-foot-long work on paper that looks like an abstract meditation on a mountain range. Lee’s bent toward geometric abstraction and his slow accumulation of marks and lines suggest a freehand version of Spirograph suffused with Zen-like grace. (Open Wednesdays through Fridays, 10 to 5, and Saturdays and Sundays, noon to 5.)
For a copy of this article please contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
‘No Border’: Zheng Xuewu Solo Exhibition
August 01, 2007 Time Out Beijing
The Mountain’s Hold
August 01, 2007 Living Art Magazine
Excerpt—
The mountainous physicality of Japan, Korea and China provides some level of explanation. Living and breathing amongst such magnificent features would make it hard to rid the psyche of mountains, as a recent New York exhibition bore testament. The Mountain, curated by Art Projects International, brought together four Korean artists: Myong Hi Kim: Tchah-Sup Kim; Choong Sup Lim; and Il Lee. All four live in New York but their work is still strongly influenced by their culture and mother country. It is, however, the relevance of nature and the landscape to the belief systems of these countries that offers a greater understanding.
The common denominator is that nature is sacred, and within nature certain elements are given particular reverence: the moon, cherry blossom, snow, water and mountains…
For a complete copy of this article please contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
Il Lee: Ballpoint Drawings - Queens Museum of Art
July 26, 2007 Time Out New York
IL LEE: Ballpoint Drawings at the Queens Museum of Art is reviewed in the July 26-August 1, 2007 issue of Time Out New York.
IL LEE: Ballpoint Drawings at Queens Museum of Art
July 19, 2007 artnet
IL LEE: Ballpoint Drawings
Queens Museum of Art
July 19 - Sept. 30, 2007
Large-format blue and black ink drawings,
including a 50-foot installation by the Korean-born,
Brooklyn-based artist.
Curator: Joanna Kleinberg
Funding: Korean Cultural Service New York
IL LEE: Ballpoint Abstractions at San Jose Museum of Art
July 07, 2007 San Francisco Chronicle
Ballpoint abstractions in San Jose: I wish I had seen sooner the stirring show of abstractions by Korean-born New York artist Il Lee at the San Jose Museum of Art. It ends Sunday.
More than 20 years ago Lee, now in his mid 50s, began working with one of the few marking tools underrepresented in contemporary art: the ballpoint pen. He moves it at a speed that leaves in the dust its function as a writing tool or even a drawing tool.
"BL-060" (2005) looks like a mountain landscape, a subject deeply rooted in the Asian arts. But in a close view, imagery dissolves and process comes forward.
We can see that the solid form thins toward the bottom edge of the piece into a thicket of ink whorls and hatchings. They thicken to a blue black monochrome, bounded above by a sort of horizon line.
We might read in Lee's piece an echo of the ancient divisions of reality into heaven and earth, or light and darkness. But the seemingly automatic action of his hand, tempered by the hard boundary above and the thinning of marks below, asserts itself everywhere as something that outraces any intellectual agenda.
A broad program seems to have guided the making of this piece, and most of the others on view. Consciousness of the working surface -- how to divide it, how to apportion the weight of marking -- appears uppermost. He leaves us to decide whether the apparent effects of light, mood and atmosphere arise more from his process or from our desire to see meaning in it.
– Kenneth Baker
IL LEE: Ballpoint Abstractions at San Jose Museum of Art
April 12, 2007 San Jose Inside
Excerpt–
For those of you who think creating modern art doesn’t require dedication, you should take a look at the exhibition of works by Korean artist Il Lee (“Ballpoint Abstractions”) currently on display at the San Jose Museum of Art. You will be amazed. I did not know that such intense, focused dedication was possible. Why do I say that? Lee’s work is produced by scribbling on paper and canvas with a ballpoint pen—weeks, months and years of scribbling, millions upon millions of scribbles placed just where he wants them to create his intended visual effects.
– Jack Van Zandt
For a complete copy of this article please contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
Whirls Enough And Time, IL LEE does wonders with a humble ballpoint pen
April 12, 2007 metroactive.com
Excerpt–
Artist IL Lee doesn't need sable-hair brushes and hand-ground pigments. The Korean-born artist, who has lived and worked in New York since 1977, chose another path in 1981, when he began to draw exclusively with the humble ballpoint pen—and not just any ballpoint, but the cheapest Papermate black-ink pen, which he could purchase in bulk. Evincing great gestural assurance, Lee draws tangled skeins of ballpoint lines on large sheets of heavy-weight paper and, lately, primed canvas.
– Michael S. Gant
For full article
Beauty in Ballpoint: Distinctive Doodles by Il Lee
April 01, 2007 San Jose Mercury News
IL LEE: Ballpoint Abstractions at the San Jose Museum of Art is reviewed by Sara Wykes on the front page of The Mercury News Sunday Art Section.
Excerpt–
In this mass of little experiments, Lee has played with lines like a composer noodling away on a piano. After more than 20 years of such playing, he has expanded to complex symphonies of powerful visual notes: "BL-060" (2005) is nearly room-sized, spreading across a 7-by-12-foot canvas. His lines shout out with an effluent energy and intelligence that drives the ink, sending it roaring from one side to the other.
The art museum is hosting Lee's first major museum survey exhibition, "Ballpoint Abstractions," and as a cool-tech extra, it has loaded a short YouTube video of the artist at work onto its Web site (http://www.sjmusart.org); it also features five of Lee's images as a mini-preview of the show. The museum has published an excellent catalog for the exhibit featuring an essay by its organizer, San Jose Museum of Art senior curator JoAnne Northrup...
He masses his slender lines of blue or black ink until they form dense bodies or solid platforms. From those foundations, delicate sprays launch themselves into space in a visual language that makes it hard to tell if objects are colliding or reaching out, floating or overflowing.
But most certainly, they are moving, driven by Lee's distinctive push.
What also is clear is the appeal of Lee's ambiguous forms. What Lee has accomplished with single lines transforms inanimate, everyday inks into vibrant fields of color with trailing edges that sway through a luminous atmosphere, seemingly with no top or bottom. Using a limited tool, Lee expresses exquisite complexity.
– Sara Wykes
For a complete copy of this article please contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
Jean Shin: TEXTile
March 01, 2007 Art Asia Pacific
Excerpt–
TEXTile (2006), the exhibition's centerpiece, is a 25-foot long interactive tapestry made from over 20,000 computer keycaps, transcribing e-mail correspondence between the artist and Fabric Workshop and Museum staff. An aluminum armature support the fabric, rising at both ends. Resting on a desk-like extension at one end, the first three rows, corresponding to the first e-mail exchanged, serve as a makeshift keyboard...
– Murtaza Vali
For a complete copy of this article please contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
IL LEE: Ballpoint Abstractions (text from catalogue)
February 27, 2007 IL LEE: Ballpoint Abstractions
Recently a well-respected art historian confided to me his belief that the tradition of abstract art had reached a state of exhaustion, its contemporary practitioners now doomed to repeat themselves. I strongly disagreed, countering that abstraction was a classic language comparable to jazz, open to infinite extension and refinement. More than any contemporary artist I can think of, Il Lee proves my point. Jazz has been around for not quite a century, while Lee draws from a tradition that has survived for more than a millennium—the Asian tradition of ink drawing on paper, known to the West by the Japanese term sumi-e. Lee has given new life to this ancient practice, transforming it nearly beyond recognition. The expressive inky line remains, but Lee’s use of ballpoint pen gives his art a freshness and originality that satisfies the avant-garde craving for the new. In Lee’s hand, line achieves tremendous power and a range of moods and “personalities.” At times it is strident and aggressive, ejected in great profusion. Yet Lee’s touch can also be delicate, presenting a multitude of quivering, undulating strokes that suggest blades of grass stirred by a gentle breeze. In all cases Lee demonstrates a mastery of line that is breathtaking and absolutely unique—proving that abstraction is still very much alive and well.
– Susan Landauer
Foreword from the catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibition IL LEE: Ballpoint Abstractions presented at the San Jose Museum of Art from March 11 to July 8, 2007.
Susan Landauer is the Katie and Drew Gibson Chief Curator at the San Jose Museum of Art.
China’s Hottest Export: Contemporary Art
December 04, 2006 Barron's
Excerpt–
"The contemporary art world is much less Eurocentric and much more interested in finding new ideas, even as artists are becoming more international in the work they produce," says Jung Lee Sanders, owner of Art Projects International, a New York gallery.
Her roster includes Il Lee, a Korean-born and educated artist who will have his first U.S. museum show in San Jose next year, as well as an Iranian artist, Pouran Jinchi. Other artists achieving international status include Lee Ufan, one of the leaders of Korea's monochrome movement, which hews to the repetition of geometric images.
For a complete copy of this article please contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
IL Lee, Chun Kwang-Young and Lee Ufan: International Abstraction, Generational Trajectories
December 01, 2006 Art AsiaPacific
Excerpt–
Using the dark black and indigo inks of ballpoint pens, Il Lee builds up monumental form through repeated working over a particular space, with the edges of his images diffused and loosened by random curling lines. The results, which take on a performative aspect given the single-minded endurance required for their production, are both monolithic and subtle.
– Jonathan Goodman
For a complete copy of this article please contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
IL Lee at Art Projects International
October 01, 2006 Art in America
Excerpt–
There is an almost palpable liquidity in the dense, indigo heart of Il Lee’s recent production. Using common ballpoint pens, he locates a point or describes an arc or line on his paper or canvas support. The ink becomes increasingly fluid with the heat of his hand as he works, and an increasingly solid form ventures its incessant spread, as though the artist were determined to obliterate the ground entirely. At the edges, the sweep of line slows and reclaims its identity as a distinct part among the skeins of marks. Yet the work has come as close to painting as drawing can.
– Edward Leffingwell
For a complete copy of this article please contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
Just what is it that makes Il Lee’s art so different, so appealing?
April 01, 2006 Art in Culture
Essay by Erik Bakke for the exhibition brochure IL LEE: New Work.
Reprinted in Art In Culture, April 2006.
Excerpt–
Lee's work can be approached from many directions. The inventiveness of the work suggests the avant-gardes of modernism while its refinement brings to mind a classical approach. Grand themes are developed with assuredness, while details are at once supporting arguments and flights of fancy on which Lee invites the viewer to partake...
How does Lee's work reach out and change the viewer? In a time when symbols of safety and danger permeate the culture, Lee's work offers a sophisticated reminder of elemental concerns not couched in advertising slogans. The rhetoric of these works has not been divorced from content. From subtle yet direct grounds to powerful basic forms to lyrical details, all aspects of Lee's works and their processes are transparent. The viewer is relieved and then empowered to be able to discover for themselves the honesty of the work and its warm and direct, poetic contribution.
For a complete copy of this article please contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
IL LEE: Beyond the Minimal
April 01, 2006 Art In Culture
Essay by Lilly Wei for the catalogue Paris/New York: IL LEE.
Reprinted in Art In Culture, April 2006.
Excerpt–
…Il Lee’s work also radiates a certain spirituality filtered through minimalist non-objectivity. In the pulse of its forms, it’s, chi perhaps, it seems to breathe with the breath it took to make it while the endless markings, both visible and scribbled over, trace and reflect the time that went into its creation. Objects formeditative contemplation as well as analytical discourse, Il Lee’s subtle and subtly enriched paintings or writings are exemplary and prophetic balance of cultures, a merging which greatly extends his field of operation and one that is more and more the normal for a globalized world.
For a complete copy of this article please contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
Art in America Review - Richard Tsao
October 01, 2005 Art in America
Excerpt–
For this show he [Richard Tsao] deployed what has become a signature series of small, contemplative paintings saturated with intense color. With their relative isolation and dramatic lighting, the paintings exemplify a tradition of abstraction sufficiently meditative for a devotional reading...
– Edward Leffingwell
For a complete copy of this article please contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
Review, Zheng Xuewu at API
September 14, 2005 Art Asia Pacific
Excerpt–
After achieving a surface of remarkable complexity, Zheng paints by hand his imagery, which usually occurs against a background of a single color. The combination of techniques results in art of singular complexity in which complicated abstract and figurative images, some of them painted and some not, compete for our attention. The intricacies of these one-of- a- kind colored prints border on the exquisite; they are mesmerizing in their occupation of pictorial space. Like so much of today's good art, the work of Zheng occupies the interstices between genres and methods, with a resulting density of content that grabs the viewer's attention.
– Jonathan Goodman
For a complete copy of this article please contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
Painters to Watch: Collage Education - Gwenn Thomas
April 03, 2005 ARTnews
Painters to Watch: Collage Education
Digital technology helps Gwenn Thomas mine the history of modernism
Excerpt–
This artwork, which is called Flag (1993), as well as Thomas's subsequent works, is a clever confluence of painting's diametric modes: abstraction and realism. The shadows in the scans or photos produce tromp l'oeil effects that make viewers consider what it is the are looking at–the final painting, the photograph, and the collage. A fuzzy snippet or orange felt or a ruffled piece of torn paper can appear at once flat and multidimensional, creating a "depth of field," as Thomas puts it, "that is precisely described and denied."
For a complete copy of this article please contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
Time Chapter: Chelsea - Jian-Jun Zhang
January 05, 2005 Art AsiaPacific
Jian-Jun Zhang's exhibition Time Chapter at DTW Gallery (in collaboration with Art Projects International) is reviewed by Jonathan Goodman in the Winter (#43) issue of Art AsiaPacific.
Excerpt–
...Zhang has added a Le Corbusier-style roof to a building complex dating back some five hundred years. The pool in front of the housing complex, interesting, does not reflect Zhang's additional forms, so that there is an air of unreality to the intervention. Zhang's attempts to humanize buildings by including handmade forms are generally successful, their subversive air adding to, as well as taking from, the environments in which they have been imagined.
For a complete copy of this article please contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
IL Lee at Art Projects International
October 22, 2004 Art AsiaPacific
Excerpt–
A product of both Western and Asian cultures, Il Lee's remarkable series of ballpoint pen drawings quote both the theoretical and physical reductiveness of minimalism and the understated lyricism of classical Asian culture. The combination, in Lee's case, is a stunning hybrid, not only of form but also of intention, in which the artist's allegiances are made more complex by his ability to reference the thought and style of two very different approaches to art.
– Jonathan Goodman
For a complete copy of this article please contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
Art AsiaPacific Review - Richard Tsao
September 01, 2004 Art AsiaPacific
Excerpt–
Each canvas presents a surface of densely encrusted color, comprised of dozens of layers of paint that evoke tectonic plates taking shape as they drift across a planet's surface. Flecks of pigment emerge like faint starts that at first glance register on one's retina searching the night sky. Broader fields of color slowly resolve into an even wider and shifting range across ridges, valleys and seas of texture. Never quite organic, the interstitial hues seem metallurgical, geological.
– Brian Mertens
For a complete copy of this article please contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
Jean Shin in The New York Times
June 20, 2004 The New York Times
The Modern's Dirty Laundry
MoMA Queens Puts Its Detritus on Display
'Humble Masterpieces'
'Projects 81: Jean Shin'
Museum of Modern Art Queens
Excerpt–
The exhibition of employees' clothes, ''Projects 81: Jean Shin,'' has two parts, a fabric mural and a hanging sculpture, both of which Ms. Shin, an installation artist, created out of 90 articles of clothes donated by the museum's guards, curators, registrars, publicists and even its director, Glenn D. Lowry.
The show of ordinary objects, ''Humble Masterpieces,'' takes up a single case. Arranged in a grid under glass are 122 things, including a Bic pen, a paper clip, a soda can with a stay-on pull-tab opener, a Durabeam flashlight, a Bayer aspirin tablet, some Lego pieces, a Solo plastic coffee cup lid, a Ziploc bag, a Band-Aid strip, a roll of Scotch tape, a Duracell AA battery, a Swatch watch, a safety pin, a Post-it note and a pile of M & M's. The objects did not actually come from the staff's desk drawers.
...Some are in the museum's design collection; others are being considered for acquisition. And they are in mint condition.
In contrast, the clothes that appear in ''Project 81'' have clearly been through the wringer. The curator, Eva Respini, sent a memo out to the staff calling for clothes. Some articles, she noted, came right from the dry cleaners and still had their tags and staples. Others came dirty. Some she remembered seeing on her colleagues' backs. And then the art began.
To make the mural, Ms. Shin clipped out the seams, cuffs, collars, plackets and pockets from the garments that the curator collected for her. Then, as Ms. Shin explained during the installation, she starched and ironed the remaining pieces, labels and all, to the two facing walls leading from the coat check to the galleries. To make the sculpture, she wove the missing parts, which she poetically calls ''the seam skeletons,'' into a messy net, dripping with cuffs and collars, and hung it from the gap between the two mural walls.
It's all quite lovely. Starched to the left-hand wall (as you walk toward the galleries) you see the cut-outs from colorful print dresses and shirts. On the right-hand wall are the flattened remnants of lots of black and gray garments, shading into the dullness of khakis and into the paleness of oxford cloth. Why so much black? The art world wears black, she explained, so ''a lot of people gave black pants.'' She helpfully pointed out Mr. Lowry's shirt, a pink-and-white striped oxford.
''It is a portrait of the MoMA staff,'' Ms. Respini said, and it is about ''the impossibility of seamlessness.'' How so? ''We are in many locations, here in Queens and in Manhattan. This speaks to the fractured nature of the staff,'' she said. ''It is an attempt to deal with that.'' How has the staff responded? They are excited about the show. She said they keep coming up to her to say, ''I can't wait to see my corduroy shirt!'' And so the mending begins.
– Sarah Boxer
For a complete copy of this article please contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
Art Projects International: Ten Years
June 01, 2004 Art AsiaPacific
Excerpt–
Art Projects International (API) commemorates ten years of dedication to contemporary art with their anniversary release of Art Projects International: Ten Years, a timeline formatted book highlighting gallery works and events from 1993-2003.
Readers are invited to gain informative insight to the world of contemporary Asian art through various critiques, including those by Art AsiaPacific’s Jonathan Goodman and Xenia Tetmajer von Przerwa, as well as other important figures in the field including Margaret Sheffield and the late Alice Yang among others.
Artists depicted throughout this book include contemporary Parisian painter In-Hyung Kim, whose 2003 exhibition, "Undergrowth," continued her passion motif by way of vegetative images, and Korean-born artist Il-Lee, who engages the black and white dichotomy at a New York City exhibition displaying his ballpoint pen drawings entitled Line and Form: Drawings 1984-1996.
These artists are two out of countless others with unique, Asia-inspired artwork that API has presented throughout the past ten years. More recently, the incorporation has taken a seat at the forefront of contemporary Asian art offering a look at new and compelling artists who originate from numerous facets around the world.
The book's retrospective look also illustrates and addresses concerns with the propensity of characterizations and assumptions all to often attributed to Asian art. Indeed, many of the works included in the book are created and influenced by multiple sociopolitical and cultural contexts.
According to Chinese sculptor Jian-Jun Zhang: "Art becomes a dialogue between cultures; it interacts with nature, with spirit, and with politics." Perhaps an equally apt remark in regard to API's effort to emphasize diversity on a global scale over the past decade.
Marking: Drawings by Contemporary Artists from Korea
March 01, 2004 Art AsiaPacific
The exhibition Marking: Drawings by Contemporary Artists from Korea is reviewed by Shinyoung Chung in the Spring 2004 issue of Art AsiaPacific.
Excerpt–
Theresa Chong, based in New York, engages in inscribing patterns that are structured with graphic software and echoes the effects of Abstract Expressionist masters. A grown-up rendition of Connect-the-Dots, the myriad white dots and pencil marks against deep blue backgrounds suggest celestial bodies, but gradually the lines reveal movements of brushstrokes inspired by the New York School.
Having arrived in New York in the 1970s, Il Lee and Choong-Sup Lim are part of a pioneering generation of New York-educated Korean artists. Il Lee contributed a new ballpoint pen drawing to the show, taken from his recent project involving canvas rather than paper. Lim's "canvas activity” as he calls it, addresses both two-dimensional and sculptural space, utilizing a semi-transparent screen stretched on a shaped support that results in interspatial mark making.
Myong Hi Kim's drawings of oil pastel on blackboards evoke schoolroom nostalgia filled with imagery from her childhood. The work of her husband, Tchah-Sup Kim, involves geographical and geometrical renderings. In-Hyung Kim's series of botanical drawings added color and vivacity to the gallery setting.
– Shinyoung Chung
For a complete copy of this article please contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
Zhang Jian-Jun at DiverseWorks
February 01, 2004 Art in America
Excerpt–
Zhang Jian-Jun, who divides his time between New York and his native Shanghai, showed two high-concept projects. The first, 2000 Years in Motion (2003), consists of three silicone rubber columns, ranging from 74 to 94 inches in height, on motorized scootboards. At the top of each lumpy, twisted, modernist column–their shapes playing off historical Western prototypes identified in photos on the gallery walls–sits a securely adhered antique Chinese vessel. As a subtle commentary on cultural fusion, these tall hybrid forms, engaged in a slow-motion bumper-car dance, show great resiliency–bouncing harmlessly off each other and the surrounding walls when contact is made. In Zhang's other work, dozens of photographs each with his slight, added-on alterations in pigment–record the favorite locales of Houston art-world notables. Over decades, the deliberately lightexposed photographic images will fade away (like many of the places themselves), leaving only the mark of the artist's hand– and Zhang's call for collectors to engage a fresh generation of artists in making new work from the remains.
– Richard Vine
For a complete copy of this article please contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
A Week of Surprises
January 05, 2004 Asian Art News
Excerpt–
At a group show at Art Projects International, the works of Korean artist Il Lee and Chinese artist Hilda Shen were of note. Lee's ballpoint pen drawing of a dense tangle of lines and fluid, amorphous shapes was captivating and looked more like a beautiful painting than a drawing. Shen's intriguing twisted and metamorphic sculpture made of paper, ink and wax referenced a long tradition of Chinese scholars' rocks, which are collected and treasured as objects of contemplation. Covered with the fingerprint marks of different people, her work is an interesting mediation on the nature of transformation and the historical impact of people or cultures.
For a complete copy of this article please contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
All about the Delicacy and Energy of the Line - IL Lee
November 23, 2003 The New York Times
Excerpt–
For pure linear intensity, IL Lee's drawings cannot be bettered. They demonstrate how pen and ink can be used to build complex forms that seem held together by some sort of adhesive energy. But around the edges, the line breaks away from the gravitational force that pulls it back in on itself, creating auras that complement the density of bundles. With a ballpoint pen on meticulously prepared surfaces, the artist has achieved remarkably sensuous results.
– Helen A. Harrison
For a complete copy of this article please contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
In-Hyung Kim & Jian-Jun Zhang at Art Projects International
October 01, 2003 Art Asia Pacific
Presenting eight works by Shanghai-born artist Jian-Jun Zhang, and eleven by Paris-based Korean artist In-Hyung Kim, the exhibition transported the viewer from the barren concrete desert that is New York’s Tribeca into a lush and lively garden of waters, rocks, plants and flowers.
The gallery’s entry way was dedicated to sumi-ink works y Jian-Jun Zhang. Two pieces from a series entitled Water came out of the thirty-five panel installation recently completed in Houston. The dense yet soft, fluid yet contoured compositions epitomized the element. Water’s playful splashes, currents, and drops, and its innate balancing of clarity and opacity are conveyed animatedly. Paired with vividly textured depictions of scholar’s rocks form the ongoing sumi-ink Garden of Re-Creation project, these works conjured up both the physical and spiritual setting of a Chinese garden.
Adjacent to Zhang’s calligraphic world was that of In-Hyung Kim’s thick, lush and vibrant depictions of undergrowth. Despite their density, Kim’s untitled acrylic paint compositions did not seem restrained or struggling to escape form within the confines of the picture plane. Rather, these works take you to a cool hideaway from the heat of a summer’s day with light peaking in as if trying to disturb the internal reverie. The subtle gradations of green tones, interspersed with brightly colored flowers as opulent and plump as ripe fruit, make the scene one warm enclosure.
Despite the similarity in theme, the source of the show's dynamic lay in the subtle balancing of differences. Both artists worked with concepts of the organic, however Zhang's ascetic black and white compositions visualized a different approach from Kim's strong colors and density. The bold yet measured brushwork of Zhang's scholar's rocks offset Kim's tumultuous yet refined strokes. While Kim and Zhang have been working closely with Art Projects International almost from its inception, this was the first time that their works were shown jointly–a truly celebratory combination.
–Xenia Tetmajer Von Przerwa
Visual Experience Time And Cultural Form: Installations by Zhang Jian-Jun
December 01, 2002 Chinese-Art.com
Excerpt–
"Zhang Jian-Jun's art is concerned with continuity of culture and of human values through time and space. In an era when there is such fascination with the superficial changes that flit through the kaleidoscope of daily life, the affirmation of a coherent substrate is reassuring. It also is the reflection of a mature artist dealing thoughtfully with the problems of our times."
For a complete copy of this article contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
Kismet - Gwenn Thomas
November 01, 2002 ARTnews
Excerpt–
Gwenn Thomas's neo-retro pastel beauties also shimmered–pigments prints on canvas that pictured strips of ripped photographic paper and cut felt in abstractions paying homage to Lee Krasner's "City Verticals." Thomas however, adds such a preternatural tangibility to 2-D that you swear the felt is real.
– Lilli Wei
For a complete copy of this article please contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
Pouran Jinchi
October 01, 2002 Art in America
Excerpt–
Many of her strokes are derived from Farsi letters and diacritical marks that push away from legibility and direct themselves toward organic abstraction... More recently, she has minimized literary sources and declared her interest in, of all things, ants. In fact, the title of her exhibition was "Antworks."
Viewers amused at this change in theme might not recognize in the well-composed canvases a reference to the Farsi word for ants, "moorcheh." Actually, the graphic design of Jinchi's canvases recognizes the ants' capacity for building colonies or walking in waves across the ground. While the general arrangement is purely of her imagining, the ants themselves are painted with a subtle regard for their forms: small eyes, rounded bodies, tapered legs. They are usually tightly massed together into columns that inch their way up or across the canvas. For all the natural history being described here, the ants' patterns make pleasing visual motifs; Jinchi keeps her training in calligraphy close at hand...
– Jonathan Goodman
For a complete copy of this article contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
Gwenn Thomas at Art Projects International
October 01, 2002 Art in America
Excerpt–
For the 18 pieces in the show, including three C-prints of drawings, Thomas uses photography to highlight detail and tonal quality. Five panels from the series Abstract 23-27 (1998-99) were placed next to each other for a virtuoso display of illusionistic texture. The differently colored elements of each panel look like torn paper; in repetition, they suggest that Thomas is telling a story through forms. Two drawings were also on view. In a small untitled 2001 piece in India Ink and marker, Thomas again arrays rows of rectangles, sometimes filled with squiggly lines, sometimes filled with color. The piece is alive with precise marks.
– Jonathan Goodman
For a complete copy of this article please contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
Kismet, The Unexpected Connection - Gwenn Thomas
September 06, 2002 The New York Times
The New York Times - Art in Review
Excerpt–
…His sensibility appears to be shared by Gwenn Thomas's gridded collages of torn paper and scraps of felt. But her pictures turn out to be photographs of collages printed in slightly dim colors on canvas: virtual collages that wryly comment on Modernism's love affair with raw materials.
For a complete copy of this article please contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
Gwenn Thomas
June 01, 2002 NY Arts Magazine
Excerpt–
The Iris or Pigment prints invite the viewer to travel through a time tunnel of recent technologies. At the end of the tunnel, were light can be expected, Thomas's drawing or collage appear, imbued with the meaning and mystery of the artist's emotional self. Less than an instant is needed to get from the print to the drawing or collage, since it all happens in the same surface, but in terms of process perceived, the viewer navigates the long path from one technology to the previous, from a medium that glorified personal hand work to a medium that tells a story by the work of transistors and chips.
At Art Projects International two drawings or exhibit (India ink and marker on paper) come from the artist's studio to claim their place in the gallery. Having fought successfully the artist's idea that they would be made exclusively to be devoured by her own camera, they propitiate a moment of learning: they allow the viewer to see what Thomas can do with each one of the media she examines in the profound presentation.
– Eduardo Costa
For a complete copy of this article please contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
In-Hyung Kim at Art Projects International
January 01, 2002 Art in America
In-Hyung Kim’s art feels authentically Symbolist; its visionary power and refusal to yield specific meanings fulfill Mallarmé’s goal of allusiveness and musicality. Luminous veils of white and yellow arise at the centers of her paintings, evoking indeterminate distance and establishing a mood of poetic reverie.
The recent oil paintings of flowers (all works are untitled) combine natural observation with Kim’s idea of beauty and an infusion of emotion. Images of gestation in certain works seem to evolve before our eyes. In a painting of a poppy (2000), for example, line, color and turbulent brushwork transmit a vital impulse from one form to another, and a buoyant rhythmic energy informs the whole. A painting of a flowering tree, one of the strongest works, is both active and meditative. The action is that of a tree arching with a burst of golden blossoms that flower against an intensely dark yet light-filled ground. The artist says of her technique, “I see a flower or tree which I find beautiful, then I interiorize it, and so the image changes into something more personal.”
Much of Kim's work is characterized by the rhapsodic and lyrical, but this remarkable painter also has a strong sense of the constructive. A work of 1997, comprising 66 mixed-medium drawings, each 8 1/2 by 11 3/4 inches, is impressive for its formal cohesion, even as Kim's versatile line evokes the metamorphoses of nature. This is a rare artist, with a passionate and compelling vision of nature.
– Margaret Sheffield
For a complete copy of this article contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
Pouran Jinchi
October 01, 2001 Art Asia Pacific
Pouran Jinchi's 2000 exhibition Pouran Jinchi: Recent Paintings at Art Projects International is reviewed by Jonathan Goodman in Art Asia Pacific, issue 32, 2001.
Excerpt–
In a large untitled painting from 2000, inspired by a poem in Farsi, two groups of black calligraphic strokes rise up on the left and right sides of the painting, forming a U-shape as they drop down and then meet in the middle. In the centre is a pile of grey-shaped strokes, whose varying widths and curves are emphasized by the way the forms tumble against each other. In the upper centre of the painting a few strokes break free of the mass, their poetic isolation defining Jinchi's principle here of contrasting the group with the individual. Jinchi works on several planes, juxtaposing pure form with real words in ways that not only define but also expand the imagery she creates.
– Jonathan Goodman
For a complete copy of this article contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
Small Marks, Big Spaces The Paintings of Yeong Gill Kim
April 01, 1999 Art Asia Pacific
Excerpt–
Kim differentiates between our knowledge of art as a material medium and its ability to affect the imagination. He returns the work to the viewer, believing that the dialogue between the two is achieved only when 'physical limitations are jumped over." As he understands it, the severe simplicity of his art may be a way of intentionally neglecting external experience in favor of something other, something beyond normal recognition. When the artist returned to Korea two years ago, a monk staying at a friend's house read his face and told him, "You could have become a superb monk if you had decided to do so." Kim laughs at the assertion, knowing that, in his case, becoming a monk and an artist are one and the same."
– Jonathan Goodman
For a complete copy of this article contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
Art in America Review - Richard Tsao
March 01, 1999 Art in America
Excerpt–
...Paint was poured, channeled, laid wet on wet, dried, scraped, blotted, bruised and flayed. The resulting surfaces are wrinkled, folded and torn; edges are uneven, with the paint extending beyond the support. The emerging configurations were frequently appraised, discarded or worked on further until they arrived at the desired state. The finished canvases convey a sense of nature as much as an abstracted scene of nature.
– Lilly Wei
For a complete copy of this article contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
Anders Moseholm at Art Projects International
May 01, 1998 Art in America
Excerpt—
Moseholm incorporates cityscapes, words, movie stars and the occasional giraffe in a fluid, blurry style. While some paintings resemble a soft-focus version of Mark Tansey, other works, particularly the depictions of film celebrities, remind the viewer of Gerhard Richter. Often Moseholm combines several themes and styles in one canvas.
At first glance, Moseholm's paintings tend to look as though they are under water, they are so distorted in their expression. At the same time, he uses immediately recognizable icons of contemporary culture-American culture, especially-to communicate the ubiquity of certain types of modern visual experience.
– Jonathan Goodman
For a complete copy of this article contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
Pomaoism
March 01, 1998 Art & Auction
Excerpt–
...at least five New York galleries have begun to represent artists from China: Deitch features, among others, installation artists Chen Zhen (a current finalist for the 1997 Hugo Boss prize); last summer, Jack Tilton showed the work of multimedia artist Huang Yong Ping at his SoHo gallery; Holly Solomon presented Feng Mengbo's digital art projects in February; Max Protetch is staging a group show of photographers, painters and video artists in his Chelsea gallery this month (and he mounted a group show in January); and Yvonne Force, international curatorial consultant, is coordinating "4695/1998," an exhibition of seven young Chinese artists who use traditional materials in contemporary ways, for SoHo's Lehmann Maupin Gallery this month. In addition, former Hong Kong contemporary art dealer Angela Ho specializes in young painters from China in her year-and-a-half-old Upper East Side Gallery, while the five-year-old Art Projects International gallery, run by Korean-born curator and critic Jung Lee Sanders, regularly shows art from China and Chinese-born artists living in New York.
For a complete copy of this article please contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
The Drawn and the Painted in the New Works of Kim In-Hyung
February 02, 1998 SPACE, Seoul
Excerpt–
In looking at In-Hyung Kim's large drawing comprising sixty-six individual works on paper currently on display in New York City at Art Projects International's exhibition In-Hyung Kim: New Works, a viewer is confronted with an overview–perhaps, a key–to Ms. Kim's new series of works on paper and canvas. This grid of individual works forms a pulsating rhythm of lines, colors, and patterns.
–Erik Bakke
For a complete copy of this article contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
IL Lee - Line and Form: Drawings 1984-1996
April 01, 1997 Space, Seoul
Excerpt–
At first glance–in looking at the exhibition of Il Lee's drawings at Art Projects International (API) in New York City–Il Lee's drawings are attractive minimalist works–black ink on paper. After some close observation, or perhaps after reading a press release or review, a viewer will realize that the drawings have all been made with the mono-width line of a ball point pen. Solid forms with swirling tangles of lines escaping at their edges become impressive as feats of artistic endurance.
– Erik Bakke
For a complete copy of this article contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
West Goes East: A New Generation of Asian Artists Has Become a Force in the International Art Market
March 01, 1997 ARTnews
Excerpt–
Hope abounds, however. “Everybody's talking about Asian artists, but until recently, only traditional art was seen," states Jung Lee Sanders, a Korean-born dealer who opened her gallery, API, in SoHo in 1993. “To have a truly international market for contemporary artists from Asia may take time. But it's like what American artists experienced in the 1950s, because people, up until then, would only buy European.”
For a complete copy of this article please contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
IL Lee at Art Projects International
February 01, 1997 Review
For marvels of drawing density, make a pilgrimage to Art Projects International on Broome Street where IL Lee, a Korean born artist is showing a large group of his ballpoint pen drawings for the first time (Line and Form: Drawings 1984-1996.) Captivated by the announcement card, I went down for a preview. Though the drawings are mostly recent, one initiating work from 1984 is included--a startling row of five black, hairy-looking ovals which seem so physical you'd swear they were removable. Figure/ground interaction is far more complex in the recent work. My favorite, Unititled #9613, 1996 has three black vertical massings, or two white columnar forms supporting something, depending on which way it is read. Playing sharp edges of solid black against the linear tangles zooming off other sides of a form he bends it in space. Manipulating the density of lines crossing white space he molds it into curving shapes. We see the activity as crosshatching and think shading, but no recognizable imagery disturbs the infinite motion of his force fields.
The larger drawings are more activated all over and are often dominated by ovals, whereas the smaller ones are sparser and more geometrical. He studied in Korea and at Pratt during the heyday of Minimalism, and it shows in these drawings. (He has also done a number of drawings containing only hard edged forms which have not been included.) But the furious energy in most of the work, and the obsessive nature of his approach, drawing line over line to build up the blacks, is not minimal at all. I was able to see one unframed so the directional linear massings were visible and I could get a sense of the surface of the Arches paper, which is miraculously smooth given the repetitive pen attacks made on it. Though not velvety, it does look fibrous, which of course it is, and matte. Lee has developed all sorts of techniques for controlling the paper given atmospheric changes and using its tendencies to his advantage, but then he is obviously a master of his craft.
– April Kingsley
For a copy of this article contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
Art Projects International/Paddy Hamilton: Global Skin Tones
January 01, 1997 New York Soho Arts
For a complete copy of this article contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
Yeong Gill Kim at Art Projects International
September 13, 1996 The New York Times
The New York Times - Art in Review
Yeong Gill Kim
Art Projects International
Born in Korea, now living in New York City, this painter works on a large scale in black and white acrylic. The canvas surfaces are scuffed and stained, setting up smudgy, accidental landscapes, with mountains defined here and there by clusters of curved lines. The dominant forms, though, are crowds of tiny human figures swarming out to the paintings' edges. By thinning his pigment down to the gray, soaked-in consistency of ink on absorbent paper, Mr. Kim makes clear references to a long, contemplative tradition of Asian brush painting. At the same time his figures, often looking both panicked and bellicose, suggest narratives with a distinctly post-nuclear spin.
Previously this artist has collaged photographic images from recent history -- the Japanese occupation of Korea, the Korean War -- into his work. They are absent here, though their sense of disquiet remains. The results aren't earth-shattering, but they suggest one of the many ways, on the conservative end of the spectrum in this case, that contemporary Asian artists are drawing ideas from a blend of Western and non-Western traditions.
– Holland Cotter
Enter Youth, Quieter and Subtler
May 17, 1996 The New York Times
For a complete copy of this article please contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
The Village Voice Review - Gwenn Thomas
March 26, 1996 The Village Voice
Excerpt–
Her gray-toned geometric abstractions are photos of low-tech collages that have been printed on linen and stretched like paintings, so they seesaw provocatively between mediums, as intelligent as they are entertaining.
For a complete copy of this article please contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
Paddy Hamilton and Emmanuelle Waeckerle
November 27, 1995 The Village Voice
Excerpt–
A collaborative project involving a found object (a headless plastic camel) and their own Euro-African ethnicity by two artists working in London, tided "Carry Me Along Oh Roads."
– Kim Levin
Jung Hyang Kim and Jian-Jun Zhang
June 01, 1995 SPACE, Seoul
Excerpt–
Jian-Jun Zhang showed several works from his "Fire and Water" series. The artist is primarily known for his installations, which tend to symbolize larger processes. In "Fog Inside" (1992), for example, there is a black metal pool filled with ink and water, which are headed from beneath so that the mixture steams. In the show at Art Projects International, he continues his interest in ink as medium symbolic of "cultural and spiritual consciousness."
–Jonathan Goodman
For a complete copy of this article please contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
Flash Asia: International Asian Art Brief - Jian-Jun Zhang
May 01, 1995 Flash Art
USA: New York: Art Projects International exhibited Jung Hyang Kim and Jian-Jun Zhang, from 1 April to 29 April. The artists, Jung, originally from Seoul, and Zhang, originally from Shanghai, both currently work and live in New York...
Flash Asia: International Asian Art Brief
March 01, 1995 Flash Art
Art Projects International, which aims to facilitate international dialogue between Western and Eastern artists and audiences, exhibited New York artist Li-Lan in the show "Postmarks: Recent Paintings and Pastels" (27 November – 1 December), and exhibited the work of New York artists Yeong Gill Kim and David Brody in the show entitled "Monochromatic Vision" (5 January – 8 February), which aimed to illustrate the different ways the artists have referenced Asian ink painting in their work. According to the gallery director Jung Lee Sanders, "Kim was born in Korea and studied there as well as in the West, and his references to Korean ink painting are a way to acknowledge his cultural heritage... on the other hand, Brody, born in New York City, looks to 17th Century Chinese ink paintings of Kung Hsien as an example of a way to battle 'the contending ghosts' of figuration and abstraction and to examine Western concerns, such as 'the brutal, the earthy, the ugly' in the light of a non Western model"...
Reviews: Gwenn Thomas
February 01, 1995 Artforum
Excerpt–
By isolating the most basic properties of photography and the behavior of sensitized surfaces–grays and blacks, light and shadow, texture and tone–Thomas' grids provide a remarkable and elegant demonstration of the way the medium of photography shapes the look of things. Beyond that, Thomas' works are a fresh take on the old dilemmas of the Minimalist grid. By exploiting the photographic aura, she adds emotional resonance to the order and discipline of the grid, and produces compelling pictures at the intersection of image and abstraction.
– David Levi Strauss
For a complete copy of this article please contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
The Village Voice Review - Gwenn Thomas
December 20, 1994 The Village Voice
Excerpt–
GWENN THOMAS: Teetering between severe and decorative, deadpan and parodic, Thomas's mostly gray-toned geometric abstractions also straddle mediums. Photographs of collaged material (paper strips and squares, packing tape) are printed on specially sensitized linen and hung unframed like canvases. The confusion is bracing, intriguing, and smart.
– Vince Aletti
For a complete copy of this article please contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.
Art in Review - Gwenn Thomas
December 16, 1994 The New York Times
Excerpt–
Photographs of grids made up of squares and strips of cardboard, printed on linen coated with light-sensitive emulsion to produce elegant, silvery works that shimmer on the wall.
For a complete copy of this article please contact Art Projects International at or 212-343-2599.