John Krawczyk – Smoke and Gravity

Jon Tarry - Duration – Layers of Existence

Kyoung Ha Yoo - iGreen

 

January 5 – February 2, 2008

Opening Reception: Saturday, January 5th, 6 – 10 pm

 

John Krawczyk

Jon Tarry

Kyoung Ha Yoo

Lawrence Asher Gallery presents three solo exhibitions that filter contemporary art and modern living through their progressive manipulation of material and celebration of space.  John Krawczyk nurtures metal to life.  His command of the medium fathers unique, personal treasures.  Australian conceptual and installation artist Jon Tarry constructs model airports from materials found in their respective homelands.  Symbols and metaphors speaking to home, travel and growth abound in this poetic and haunting display.  Kyoung Ha Yoo uses similar architectural deftness and compositional acumen to build intricate mixed-media beauties.

Please join us for the opening reception of these exceptional solo shows on Saturday, January 5th, 2008, 6 – 10 pm.  Lawrence Asher Gallery is located at 5820 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, across the street from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and adjacent to the Craft and Folk Art Museum. Free parking is available on Wilshire Blvd. and behind 5858 Wilshire Boulevard.  Enter on Stanley Ave.  For more information, please call 323.935.9100

 

The Artists

 

John Krawczyk

Jon Krawczyk is a rare breed of sculptor capable of transcending the physical limitations of his medium, transforming his materials into hosts of deep reflections and lyrical explorations of the human condition. Krawczyk’s massive biomorphic sculptures seem to nearly breathe, indeed to live, despite their constant and inevitable stillness. Currently, Krawczyk is working on a project that involves delineating the iconic symbolism of the cross.

Krawczyk’s working process is extensive, and his sculptures bear the mark of a true and limitless mind at work, an artist for whom technique involves serious reflection on the philosophies inherent within the sculptural process.

Sculpture is the means by which I create tangible form from human experience. For the past 13 years, I have explored the possibility of solid metal as a means of expressing a myriad of gestures, movements, and emotions. I celebrate metal in all its forms, from its purest most unquantifiable essence, introducing gesture as antithetical to the material.

- J.K., 2007

A graduate from Connecticut College, Krawczyk studied fine art in Europe and apprenticed with a number of highly acclaimed sculptors. For the past 13 years, Krawczyk has imbued his artwork with the weight and presence of his own life experience, and these works have enjoyed great success in galleries and international venues and are included in several major collections including Chicago Contemporary, Palm Beach 3, Art Miami, Little Sadie’s in New York and the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

 

Jon Tarry

The body of works I would like to present include a selection of wall-mounted works and freestanding sculptures. These works explore the relationship we have with places, and the way we negotiate with each other in differing environments. The Philosopher Gilles Deleuze references ‘The Fold’ as one of infinite layers existence, which correlate to a ‘Nomadic’ experience of contemporary life. 

In this project, Jon Tarry will present a group of sculptures, paintings and collages that express these ideas of existing simultaneously. The works are a series marking airport runways that juxtapose major centers with regional locales.  This is a gesture of comparing and contrasting. These will be made of materials indigenous to the locations; for example, Tel Aviv is made of olive wood, Chicago Metal, Kensai (Japan) cherry wood, Shark Bay, cartilage, Reykjavik (Iceland), clear plexi-glass blocks. In these works, a politics of difference is explored as each runway creates an index of geographic and cultural identity.

A further series of works expands the notion of ‘trans global journey’.  The aerial experience is amplified in’ Day Crossing’ and ‘Night Crossing’ in which spatiality is subtly rendered through the use of a curved flat surface that rolls across the wall, dipping and rising in a time arrested turbulent drift.  While at street level, ‘ Urban Romance’ gives way to ‘Pragmatism’. People encounter each other where bodily form and ethereal shadows meld and collide. The drawings/paintings express this fusion through expressive figurative rendering. 

Jon Tarry works in sculpture, constructs paintings and has been developing pieces using  modern industrial technologies.   He has been creating and exhibiting consistently for two and a half decades.   His works explore how understanding of place is created, with specific reference to Australian history.

Jon Tarry has a BA in Fine Arts, Curtin University, and has studied at the Akademie fur Kunste Munich and recently achieved a Masters of Architecture RMIT Melbourne.  He presented, a digital graphic work for the project ‘Markers’ at the 49th Venice Biennale Italy and created a temporary site installation at the Red Museum for Construction in Process, Poland, as part of an international group of artists continuing the Constructivist’s Program.   Currently, Jon is working towards a solo exhibition in London and developing new work including short film projects in New York.  He is also active in large-scale commissioned sculptural pieces in Australia.

 

Kyoung Ha Yoo

My works begin on the slippery slope between abstraction and representation, drawing on such sources as multi-classical folk art, architectural drawings and interior  design patterns. My art consists of two aspects, the first is the love of the process, the second is the joy of making.

In my current paintings I explore architectural space and light to trigger loose memories from diverse cultures and social conventions.  I strive to express the space of my everyday inner life where spiritual mythology, meditation and personal memories coexist. My goal is to connect such intimate experiences with public spaces and urban landscapes, allowing a wide range of viewers to project themselves into places where there is room for their souls.

The primary visual elements in my abstract pictures are based on architectural renderings. These landscape drawings are precise, simplified images and schematic, exactly proportioned plans. I add geographic imagery based on contour maps, fabric design, flags and an assortment of other decorative elements. In my previous career as interior designer, I used many new media by trial and error. Now I use these media self-consciously, creating virtual interior spaces that hover somewhere between two and three dimensions. I want viewers to feel as if they have become engulfed by my paintings, in spaces where they can move freely and are unencumbered by the laws of gravity and everyday obligations. I use glow-in-the-dark paint because I love the way stars sparkle on clear nights. This material allows my works to shine in the dark like the stars overhead, to occupy a space somewhere between the indoor and outdoor, as if inviting viewers into an imaginary botanical world.

I believe that art has one purpose: to help us live. Each day that I walk into the studio I realize this truth. Whether comforting or confrontational, the process and the work reaffirm the value of life. The abstract space of consciousness and the visible space of  society are interconnected.  The experience of a specific public space is projected into a consciousness and established in memor, where it produces multiple identities. I come from a mono-cultural country, Korea, and I was thrown into a multi-cultural country, America.  This is reflected in my work combining both Eastern and  Western influences.

The bodily experience of space as lodged in the human memory becomes the foundation of consciousness and an individual’s sensibilities. This physiological experience composes one of the most profound continuities of our lives. It is a portrait of contemporary people,  each with an “opened window toward the world.” The architectural landscape is a fundamental component of the life code.

The rapid development of transportation and communication has turned the whole world into a global village, one in which previously unimaginable time-and-space compressions and cultural exchanges now take place. Art is abstract by nature,  in its essence and  form. It eludes definition. I define art extensively, through examples, like the notion of life itself, which is manifest through the act of living. My art brings meaning to our lives by offering us a dreamlike space to which we bring certain significant meanings, defying the monotonous repetition of everyday life. I want viewers to feel comfortable and to meditate, to feel welcome, safe and unburdened by life’s normal restrictions. My paintings invite individuals to escape everyday humdrum life.  

- K.Y.

 

 

© 2005 Lawrence Asher Gallery.  All Rights Reserved.
Lawrence Asher Gallery  |  5820 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 100  |  Los Angeles, CA  90036
Tel.: 323.935.9100  |  Fax: 323.323.964.7107