In Sook Kim, Inside Out @Gana

JTF (just the facts): A total of 14 large scale color photographs, framed in grey metal and not matted, and hung in the main gallery space on the ground floor, and in the smaller gallery upstairs. All of the works are c-prints on Diasec, made between 2004 and 2010. The works range in size from 43x63 to a whopping 181x118, and are variously available in editions of 5 or 10. A monograph on the work Saturday Night was published by Hatje Cantz in 2009 (here); it is available from the gallery for $50. There is also a thin exhibition catalog (Inside Out) that is for sale for $20. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Korean photographer In Sook Kim's first solo show in New York is a polished and sophisticated combination of meticulous architectural documentation, thoughtful staging and manipulation, and layers of rich conceptual ideas, all delivered in large scale, object quality works. It is the kind of photography that will easily cross over into the world of contemporary art, and will likely generate some buzz along the way.

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All of the works in this exhibit dissect the process of seeing and looking, pulling the viewer (who is also looking remember) directly into the frame, to peer through the brightly lit glass walls and windows of modern apartment buildings, hotels, museums, and storefronts at night. The geometries of the structures provide self contained boxes and boundaries for the interior action, like carefully controlled dioramas or theaters stacked together in grids, where cool antiseptic voyeurism meets the luridness and obsessiveness of the peep show. The boundaries of public and private are mixed and unraveled; people inhabit the buildings and fill the spaces, transforming them along the way.

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Kim's Saturday Night is the focal piece in this show, reaching floor to ceiling at roughly 10x15 feet. Each room in the hotel depicts a different nocturnal vignette, each drawn from actual newspaper stories and staged in candy-colored light. Boredom and loneliness compete with sexual perversion and violence; pleasure, pain, and emptiness are all on view, separated into isolated fragments. The viewer's eye travels from story to story, frantically jumping from titillation to sadness and back again.
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Other works in the show focus down on an individual scene, where the ideas of viewing, watching and display are examined more closely, from inside and out. In one image, a room full of dark suited men vie to bid on a naked woman on a pedestal; in another, a similar group of men "dine" on bloody women in bondage gear (viewed through a glass window). Her series Drug Store transforms this seeing in a more metaphorical manner: heroin and cocaine become staged scenes of a delusionally slimming/beautifying mirror and the fleeting pleasures of prostitutes on display in a streetside window.

Kim was a student of Thomas Ruff's in Düsseldorf, and there is a pared down conceptual rigor that is refreshing here. Whether we see a glass box museum slowly filling with visitors or watch a sordid narrative unfold in pastel pink light, her ideas have clearly been reduced and refined to their maximum potency; the staging is tightly controlled and executed, with little in the way of superfluous distraction. The different bodies of work and projects on display explore her ideas in confident, interrelated ways, spanning the objectification of women, the meaning of our spaces, and nature of drug addiction. All in, this is one of the best debut shows I have seen in a while, combining 21st century photographic craftsmanship with strong and multi-faceted ideas.
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Collector's POV: Nearly all of the works in this show are priced between $18000 and $52000, roughly based on size. The exception is the massive print of Saturday Night in the entry, which is priced at $190000. In general, these prices seem quite high for a first solo show, but the work is accomplished, her pedigree is sound, and the large glossy prints will appeal to crossover contemporary art collectors. Kim's work has not yet reached the secondary markets in any meaningful way, so it's difficult to chart any real pricing pattern. A smaller print of Saturday Night did sell at Christie's in London last year for roughly $50000. Kim is also represented by Richard Levy Gallery in New Mexico (here). While it doesn't fit into our particular collection themes, I actually think Saturday Night is going to end up being considered an important/signature piece, rewarding those risk takers who get in early.
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Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Reviews: Daily Beast (here), New York (here)

In Sook Kim

Through May 8th

Gana Art Gallery

568 West 25th Street

New York, NY 10001

Seung-Woo Back, Revised Ideals @Gana Art

JTF (just the facts): A total of 17 works, from two different series, displayed on separate floors of the dimly lit gallery. On the first floor, 7 images from the Utopia series are displayed, framed in grey with no mat; 5 of these works are diptychs hung edge to edge, while the other 2 are single images. All of the works are digital c-prints, printed in editions of 5, and made in 2008. Sizes range between 50x60 and 71x114. On the second floor, 10 works from the Blow Up series on shown; 9 of these are single images; the last is a grid of 40 images hung together as one unit. Again, the works are digital c-prints, in editions of 5 for the larger prints and 10 for the smaller ones, the larger prints ranging in size from 32x24 to 75x63; the grid is 105x200. The works upstairs were made between 2006 and 2008. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Contemporary Korean photography is clearly on the rise, according to our non-scientific hype-o-meter, and Seung-Woo Back is nearly always included when prominent names are thrown around amid the buzz. This show dives a bit deeper into two of his most recent projects, providing a larger sample of his works than is generally available in the current crop of broad survey shows.

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The Utopia series is drawn from 1970s era propaganda images from North Korea, complete with shiny science labs, chemical plants, bombers, and soul deadening cinder block architecture. These dated institutional scenes have been digitally manipulated to add in washes of pastel color in the sky and background, much like the "colorization" of old black and white movies. The addition of green, or pink, or orange to these otherwise carefully controlled black and white still images adds an unexpected touch of beauty, which of course makes them all the more unsettling and ironic.

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The Blow Up series was constructed via grainy snapshots Back took while in North Korea. Given the strict media censorship there, all of his images were checked before he left the country; this project was therefore built upon the small details of life that he could document with a tourist camera, many of which were otherwise unnoticed portions of mundane shots, later "blown up" to focus on something altogether different than what was in the foreground. The resulting collection offers a surreal glimpse of life in the North: serious police and traffic officers, empty streets with people rushing, school children posing, massive statues in vast open squares, orderly clean up crews, a patriotic pin attached to a shirt. Together, the images have the oppressive feeling of constantly being watched; the resulting mood is both creepy and depressing.

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While this show isn't exactly a sunny pick-me-up, it does offer plenty of complicated ideas to consider, particularly about the nature of controlled imagery and how it can be successfully undermined.

Collector's POV: The images from the Utopia series are priced between $13000 and $16000 for the single prints, $18000 to $23000 for the diptychs. The single larger prints from the Blow Up series range in price from $6000 to $18000, seemingly based on size; the grid of 40 images is $160000. For West coast collectors, Seung-Woo Back is also represented by Rose Gallery in Santa Monica (here).

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)
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Transit Hub:

• Photography Now @SFMOMA (here)
• Chaotic Harmony: Contemporary Korean Photography @MFA Houston (here)
• Portfolio 41 (here)

Seung-Woo Back, Revised Ideals
Through October 10th
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Gana Art Gallery
568 West 25th Street
New York, NY 10001

Layered Expressions: Korean Contemporary Photography @Gana Art

JTF (just the facts): A total of 10 works by four different photographers: Seung-Woo Back (3 images), Bien-U Bae (2), In Sook Kim (3) and Jungjin Lee (2). The images are hung in a large, one room gallery with dark walls, framed in grey or black with no mats. Back's works are digital prints, ranging from 63x45 to 70x88, made between 2006 and 2008. Bae's works are c-prints on Diasec, approximately 50x100, made in editions of 5 in 2002 and 2006. Kim's images are also c-prints on Diasec, ranging in size between 16x31 and 72x48, made in editions of 20 or 50, between 2005 and 2007. Lee's works are photo emulsion on rice paper, 57x21, made in editions of 5 in 2007.

Comments/Context: The truth of the matter is that we don't really know much about Korean photography (vintage or contemporary). But we've started to notice more Korean photographers in the contemporary mix lately (at the Armory, in auctions etc.), so we've begun to feel the need to be more educated on what's happening, thus our visit to this group show at Gana Art in Chelsea.

Bien-U Bae's misty images of dark swirling pine trees are on the left wall as you enter the gallery (installation shot above, top). These works have a "magical forest" feel to them, with an undertone of creepiness, and would fit well into a collection of black and white tree images across the history of the medium.

In Sook Kim's Saturday Night (one of three images by the artist on view) is voyeuristic look into the nocturnal activities of a variety of apartment dwellers in a single building, Rear Window style. (The work is on the far right of the installation shot at right, second from the top.) Each window is tinted a different color by the lighting, creating a mixed rainbow effect from afar. Close up, each small box tells a tale of sex, loneliness, criminality or boredom (there's even a woman hanging herself).

Jungjin Lee's delicate images on rice paper certainly have the handmade "Asian" feel of traditional scrolls or calligraphy, but up close, the abstract patterns turn out to be fragments of images of pagodas, overlapped and repeated to create the stylized inkblot forms. (Installation shot at right.) These are quiet, meditative works that open a dialogue between historical art and contemporary methods.

And finally, Seung-Woo Back's pair of images on the back wall (ironically entitled Utopia) have a 1950s collage aesthetic, combining black and white post Korean War found photographs with acid yellow and orange backgrounds. (Installation shot at right, bottom.)

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Overall, this diverse show seems to be a decent primer on current trends in Korean photography, especially for neophytes like ourselves who need a survey-type overview.

Collector's POV: Here's a quick run down on the prices: Bien-U Bae's two works are $60000 each; In Sook Kim's Saturday Night is $40000, the other two adjacent images are $3500 each; Jungjin Lee's two images are $10000 each; and Seung-Woo Back's Utopia series images are $20000 each, a third image from Real World is $25000. For our particular collection, I would gravitate towards the works of Jungjin Lee, as they might interact in intriguing ways with other architectural images we own.
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Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Seung-Woo Back: Real World (here)
• Bien-U Bae: artist site (here)
• Bien-U Bae: Sacred Wood (here)
• In Sook Kim: interview (here)
• Jungjin Lee: artist site (here)

Layered Expressions: Korean Contemporary Photography

Through May 16th

Gana Art
568 West 25th Street
New York, NY 10001