Gyun Hur at Get This! Gallery
Gyun Hur, 'Repose,' installation detail. Photo courtesy Get This! Gallery.
Gyun Hur’s Repose is the kind of show you wish you could love, want to love, but somehow the chemistry never happens. You walk into the gallery and there it is, beaming up at you from the floor: a big, brightly colored carpet of thousands of tiny pieces of shredded cemetery flowers, arranged in long, alternating bands of color. There’s an immediate sense of tension between the work’s visual power, and seeming permanence, and the realization that a quick blast of air could send the whole thing tumbling and whirling away. In addition to this “carpet,” there is a clear acrylic shelf that runs along the back and side walls of the gallery which is covered with the same striped pattern of finely-chopped, almost minced, fabric flowers.
The installation comprised 10 sets of eight-color lines, plus six more lines on the periphery, for a total of 86 two-inch lines that covered an area of over 2,400 square feet. Photo courtesy GyunHur.blogspot.com.
This installation, for all intents and purposes, is the show, though a few prints, a video, and other objects are also scattered around. And it’s very beautiful. It’s well put together, clean, looks great in the space, seems considered and thoughtful, alludes to a rich history of mystical practices such as Navajo sand painting and Tibetan mandalas, and even recalls contemporary artists like Wolfgang Laib. In other words, the work has everything it should, and yet it fails to really take hold. The problem, it seems to me, is a kind of dissonance between the work’s formal, material, and conceptual components. Taken individually—the visual presentation, the unusual and culturally loaded material of the cemetery bouquets, and the interesting kinds of associations the work evokes—each of these aspects is promising and compelling. And yet, as they’re brought together in the completed work, they don’t produce the kind of poetic interaction you’d expect. It’s like an exciting scientific hypothesis that, for some reason, just doesn’t bear out in the lab.
Almost as if to prove this point, the gallery provides a place where you can climb a set of wooden stairs and lean out a small window for a bird’s eye view of the installation in its entirety. The idea seems promising, but as you reach the top, poke your head out, and look down, you realize that there isn’t really any new information to see. It looks exactly the way you could or would have imagined from your original position on the floor. No harm, really, but you wonder just what it was they expected you to see up there.
All that being said, Hur makes a very promising showing. Her willingness to use an extremely formal vocabulary to engage with personal and emotional content is refreshing, to say the least, and if she can find a way to just tweak that recipe a little, the sparks could really start to fly.
I loved this exhibit and thought that it actually succeeded quite well. It was extremely meditative to observe both the finished product as well as the video of her shredding all of the flowers to create the final piece, and I think in many ways, that forced introspection is the point.
I agree with Susannah. Additionally, I believe the bird’s eye view of the installation was essential. I would liken it to seeing Robert Smithson’s work from the ground vs. the air. In my opinion, it completed my viewing experience and altered my understanding of the work.
I absolutely agree with Emily. I think that when you observe the work from the ground, the focus (for me at least) was in the details: the meticulous lines of color, looking at the texture of the flower “rug”… When I saw the work from the bird’s eye view I was able to see the piece in it’s entirety. Additionally, the shelf of colors also became a larger part of the final piece. It was interesting to me how separate the two appeared on the ground, but from above combined so seamlessly. What I liked so much about the work was the number of visual experiences I was able to have as a viewer.
Thank you for the review. As Susannah mentioned, this almost ‘forced introspection’ was something that the show was persuading the audience to experience. As the gallery wall was architecturally altered for the bird’s eye view, the audience then encounters another way of seeing, another perspective, not necessarily a new image. A cautious tension and an alteration of physical movement of the audience create another moving installation in the midst of this ephemeral wedding blanket.
It would be great to meet you at the artist talk on Feb. 20th, so that we can talk more about the work and its references.
- Gyun
I find it strange when an artist blogs back a response to a review about their work. Art reviews are public critiques of ones work. If the reviewer wanted a response from the artist they would have conducted an interview.
Reviews are not always full of praise so accept the criticism and do better work next time.
Gyun: Thank you for your response. I thought it was respectful and articulate. We appreciate the invitation to your talk. Good luck!
To the anonymous artist:
“If the reviewer wanted a response from the artist they would have conducted an interview.”
I’m interested to hear why you feel this way? Is a review supposed to be the final word, or can it be the beginning point for more thought? (I’m honestly curious; this is something that’s been bugging me for about a month.)
“Reviews are not always full of praise.”
Absolutely. I stand behind Charles’ review.
One of our missions in founding this journal was to celebrate a plurality of opinions. This principle includes the opinions expressed by our readers, including yourself and Gyun, when expressed with respect.
(And it doesn’t preclude the possibility that some of our writers may disagree with each other (as was with the case with Susannah).
That’s what makes art so fascinating.
Right?
Love. Always.
In.
“I’m interested to hear why you feel this way? Is a review supposed to be the final word, or can it be the beginning point for more thought? (I’m honestly curious; this is something that’s been bugging me for about a month.)”
I agree with you. A review is an opportunity to create a dialog about a work of art. But I feel that if an artist has to respond back and explain their work (after the fact), then the dialog created amongst your readers is limited to what the artist wants you to interpret and discuss about their work.
“One of our missions in founding this journal was to celebrate a plurality of opinions. This principle includes the opinions expressed by our readers, including yourself and Gyun, when expressed with respect.”
I believe Gyun work is heartfelt and packed with sentimental value. I did not intend to disrespect her. Criticism is a place for growth.
yr all wrong.
if you want to compartmentalize everything-as this blog does in its proper art writing format-its limited willingness to flex (show the flux of it all,if u will) the vantages the net can offer of blurring edges of how walled gallery art can be experienced/challenged (or reported on)..to feedback, connected and continuously connecting to the experience,not observing from the outside…as a community together sharing and trying as hard as we can to measure against realities of Now.this is a creative medium connected to the art.challenging where art as work can begin and end..
just as im sure yr gonna have somebody gush over bloom cuz it was funded by a cat with loads of green and thats important to be nice to-even if the thing itself is just plain bad…even as flux tries to move outside the gallery walls-expand the experience of art.it has it wrong. in the same way this blog has it right and wrong at the same time.
as wrong as developers have it with trying to build ” beltline workforce housing”- to compensate for the gentrification and plasticizing of the entire city – and we all gush with salivating stiffies to put happy public art in it…cuz its the right thing to do the wrong way…whatever.
- as “artist” expectation of art is stiff,proper and correctly academic. and confined-
gyun’s explanation is useless, and overly sentimental (“..midst of this ephemeral wedding blanket”?? cute.whatever.) and yes, her use of words are after the fact-i thought the exhibit as a thing unto itself was an easy success with not much new observed in any new way..it was fun eye candy and nothing more. served as an accidental colorful spectacle companion experience to jiha next door.was fun. this talk of audience changing vantages cld be applicable if the petals ran out the door and up the street and across the screen now as you read this-filmed live on the web for us to continue to observe…