On view November 4th – November 28th, full schedule of events below.
Location: Culture Lab LIC at The Plaxall Gallery, 5-25 46th Ave, Queens, NY 11101
COVID 19 Protocol
Plaxall gallery is fully ADA accessible.
Participating Artists:
Amy Fung-yi Lee, Birgit Rathmann, Case Jernigan, Claire Chambless, Daniel Mantilla, Demarco Mosby, Dongjun Kim, Esteban Agosin, J. Triangular, Jee Park, Jess Blaustein, Joseph Morris, Keun-Young Park, Kimberly Lyle, Kim Sandra Lazaro Juan & Jordon Schranz, Mark Rice, Matthew Garrison, Nicki Cherry, Noa Yekutieli, Pauline Galiana, Sana Musasama, Silliam Bims, SiSi Chen, Stacy Bogdonoff, Travis Childers, Wieteke Heldens, Will Kaplan
Curated by Jeju Island Artist Collective: Eunsun Choi / Kyung-jin Kim / Yeon jin Kim
About the Exhibition
The exhibition “Survival Tools for the Age of Ultra Anxiety” takes as its premise the state of ultra-anxiety our culture is functioning within due to the pandemic and worldwide social and economic upheaval. It questions whether our endlessly competitive society, which rewards selfish behavior over altruism, has given us the tools needed to survive or whether artists are needed to lead us away from the brink of extinction.
This group exhibition proposes physical, emotional and psychological survival through adaptation to tactics, methods and tools central to artistic creation but commonly marginalized by societies focused on expediency and short term financial profit. Through gadgets, gizmos, interactive machinery and video narratives a course forward will be proposed that values and utilizes unfettered imagination, rampant invention, irrational systems, dream logic, humor and the impossible. This exhibition depends upon and makes the case for a world built on the notion that things are not fixed in their identities but are mutable and can be changed into other things.
Logic makes sense to us because we invented it to understand the world, but our environment has no responsibility to conform to our logical expectations and in fact does not, as quantum investigation makes clear. We must adapt to a reality much more complex and unpredictable than our rational viewpoint has presented in order to survive and flourish.
The group exhibition, “Survival Tools for an Age of Ultra-Anxiety’, will be emblematic of this crucial sea change in thought by embodying its values in diverse, challenging and liberating forms.
About the Curators
“Jeju Island Artist Collective” is an artistic collaborative team composed of Kyung-Jin Kim, Eunsun Choi and Yeon Jin Kim, all immigrants from South Korea living and working in New York City. Through our practice we exorcize universal fears and anxieties through humor, imagination and invention. Our work takes many forms but focuses on the effort to negotiate everyday reality and to fit into our adopted American culture. These efforts range from hopeless but earnest, to innocent and humorous, sometimes arriving at the poignantly affecting.
Throughout humorous inventions and contraptions Eunsun Choi’s work takes many forms but invariably comprises efforts to negotiate reality and her adopted American culture. Various anxieties and traumas are confronted and dealt with inventively and humorously.
Kyung-jin Kim utilizes interactive sound installations to explore the substance of liminality inherent to dislocation, translation and adjustment.
Yeon jin Kim enlists and adapts folk and craft traditions historically demeaned by male- dominant art education in a totalitarian society, to reveal and overturn repressive systems as well as video narratives.
Full Schedule of Events
November 6th, 6:00-9:00PM: Opening Reception – RSVP on Facebook
November 13th, 3:00-5:00PM: “The spatial politics of control: social sculpture as a strategy of negotiation and resistance” Workshop by Claire Chambless – RSVP on Facebook
November 13th 5:30-7:30PM: Artist Talk with Claire Chambless, Matthew Garrison, Nicki Cherry – Share on Facebook
November 14th, 5:30-7:30PM: Artist Talk (online) with Esteban Agosin, J. Triangular, Kimberly Lyle, Mark Rice, Noa Yekutieli – RSVP on WithFriends to receive Zoom information
November 19th, 5:30-7:30PM: Artist Talk with Amy Fung-yi Lee, Keun-Young Park, Sana Musasama and Stacy Bogdonoff, SiSi Chen, and Pauline Galiana – Share on Facebook
November 20th, 3:00-5:00PM: Finding Poetry Workshop by Will Kaplan – Share on Facebook
November 20th, 5:30-7:30: Artist talk with Joseph Morris, Kim Sandra, Wieteke Heldens, Will Kaplan, and Daniel Mantilla – Share on Facebook
November 21st, 10:00AM-12:00PM (online): “Breathed poems for the camera” Workshop / Pedagogical laboratory by J. Triangular– RSVP on WithFriends to receive Zoom information
Gallery hours:
Open to the public : November 4-28
Thursday – Friday 5:00 – 9:00PM
Saturday and Sunday 2:00 – 9:00PM
Flyer image credit: Eunsun Choi / Kyung-jin Kim / Yeon jin Kim