PASSAGES | October 12th  - November 11th |

Jung-Yeon Min, Yichu Chen & Li Tianbing

Kashya Hildebrand Gallery is pleased to present a group exhibition featuring three Asian artists currently based in Paris, France.  Jung-Yeon Min (Korea), Yichu Chen (Taiwan) and Li Tianbing (China) moved to Europe to pursue studies at the prestigious Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux- Arts in Paris. Their work is united by a common underlying dialogue between past and future, ancestral and contemporary, East and West. The artists have a shared experience of relocating from one distinct culture to an utterly new one and their work is an attempt to discover their own identity between the two cultures. In a state of personal limbo, the artists were inspired to invent a new, private world of magical landscapes and figures, to which they could belong.

Jung-Yeon Min feels she exists between two worlds: traditional Korea and modern France.

In her surrealistic dreamscapes, Min effectively suspends time and space to narrate a personal experience of flux. Often, the only human figure shown is a self-portrait of the artist misplaced in an illusory environment. The artist combines multi-layered images and unworldly forms, which represent implausible links between opposing worlds. Symbols such as entangled umbilical cords suggest the idea of the artist’s quest for belonging or perhaps for a personal rebirth. In this private journey, the artist transforms Korean mythological elements into a modern reality.

Yichu Chen creates sculptures and textile installations. The new world she invents exists in the future; she proposes an “anticipatory” voyage to the year 2030, a blend of science and fiction. In this not-too-distant future, Chen creates a world in which the frenetic activity of our human society will affect the way we eat. A nutritional imbalance leads to the appearance of a mysterious virus, which becomes the cancer of the 22nd century.  In response, Yichu Chen has created the L.C. Company to fight the virus by manufacturing natural foods that would balance our nutritional deficiencies. She has begun to produce monstrous fruits of the new genetic technology (genetic transplantation), which combine the properties of both meat and vegetables. These aesthetically attractive prototypes may very well be commonplace in our world of tomorrow.

Tianbing Li employs ancient Chinese paintings as a model for his contemporary work. Li constantly longs for the tradition of his past, while living in an urban, cosmopolitan present. The artist provides a unique current interpretation of traditional Chinese painting while offering a view both of today’s world and a futuristic utopia. From afar, the paintings seem to depict plants, flowers or birds, but on closer inspection one discovers among them body parts (often sexual), toys and industrial products. The lovely landscapes with bright pinks and blues suddenly transform themselves into mutilated scenes of a fantastical world.