Opening Reception: Thursday, September 8^th, 6-8 pm

DOOSAN Gallery New York, 533 W 25^th St., New York, NY 10001

DOOSAN Gallery New York is pleased to announce YOU Hyeonkyeong’s solo exhibition, No place to go from September 1^st through October 6^th, 2016.

For her first New York solo show, the featured ten abstract works are based on the artist’s experience from her travels to Europe two years ago.

In her early work, YOU created a series of expressionist paintings of male nude models, as well as small canvases of automatic drawings of portraiture. 

Later, the artist sought to depict her subjects by expanding her interest of the person to a memory of a place or atmosphere. Rather than reproducing and expressing the formal, physical aspects, YOU strove to bring out the inner associations and sensations through pure abstract form.

In recent works, YOU employs automatic painting, or dripping technique, as well as other material properties of paint to make works that follow the strain of abstract expressionism.

The magnum opus of this exhibition, Muslim Woman, portrays a woman wearing a hijab that the artist encountered while traveling in England. When meeting this woman, the artist began to associate her with the female protagonist of Khaled Hosseini’s novel A Thousand Splendid Suns. Overlapping the two women, this painting is the result of the artist’s complicated emotions visually evident through her rough, aggressive brushstrokes, thick materials, and dark, muddy colors.

Likewise, rather than merely describing her sensations and feelings that arise from looking at her subject, YOU is dynamic in her brushwork and gesture, working vigorously with the materiality of paint to make work that has a sense of immediacy and presence. One can see YOU’s exploration as a continued commitment to experimenting with and building on the idea of abstraction in contemporary painting.

Recently, there has been a surge in the appearance of a new kind of abstraction among the works of emerging South Korean artists. Through the occasion of YOU Hyeonkyeong’s exhibition, it will provide an opportunity to reflect on the meaning and significance of abstract painting in the post-medium era.

YOU Hyeonkyeong (b. 1985) received her B.F.A. and M.F.A. in Painting from Seoul National University. She has held solo exhibitions at Hakgojae (2012, Seoul, Korea), OCI Museum of Art (2011, Seoul, Korea), Gallery LVS (2010, Seoul, Korea) and Ganainsa Art Center (2009, Seoul, Korea). She has also participated in group exhibitions at venues that include DOOSAN Gallery Seoul (2014, Seoul, Korea), National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Gwacheon (2013, Gwacheon, Korea), Kepco Art Center Gallery (2012, Seoul, Korea), Hakgojae (2010, Seoul, Korea), KT&G SangsangMadang (2010, Seoul, Korea) and Ilhyun Museum (2009, Yangyang, Korea).