bergenPAC Presents Ubiquitous: An Exhibition by artist Sei Ryun Chun
(Englewood, New Jersey – August 24, 2015) Bergen Performing Arts Center located at 30 North Van Brunt Street in Englewood, New Jersey presents Ubiquitous: An Exhibition by artist Sei Ryun Chun. The Exhibition is in residence at The Intermezzo Gallery on the 2nd floor of the bergenPAC from September 1-30, 2015. The gallery is open free to the general public during box office hours Mon-Fri 11AM – 4PM Saturday 12PM to 4PM. An artist’s reception will take place Monday, September 14, 2015 from 6-8PM.
While working as the executive director of Oms Art, Sei Ryun Chun is an active artist herself. For over twenty years, she has been a devoted supporter of community, encouraging art and culture to all generations. Her works have been exhibited around the world, including Korea, Italy, France, Germany, and the United States. Her works represent abstract expressionism. Her artworks are not limited to any specific media.
Sei's works are heavily influenced by the "Gyubang" culture - a traditional lifestyle of Korean women which focused on knitting, painting, and tea making.
In 2005, she founded Gallery Oms-- an organization which turned into a big network of active artists, now consisting of a big group of members. Her main purpose is to discover young aspiring artists and provide them with opportunities to share their works with the public. She has been, and still is, arranging exhibitions for young artists every month.
In 2010, she was awarded the AFL Foundation Award of Art Community Service for her enthusiastic efforts to give the Korean-American artists promoting opportunities to the public and art world in the New York Metropolitan area.
Sei has held over a hundred exhibitions and has successfully exhibited at the NY Art Fair, Miami Art Fair, and the SF Art Fair.
About Ubiquitous: A statement by the artist
The exhibition was focused on the theme of the round sky and rectangular earth, which I was working on for a very long time. The Korean mythologies are expressed in the round circles. I bottled the Eastern cultures and philosophies in my art work, as I wrote down my own stories in my diary. The dream of Utopia, which exists in both the East and West, was shown as a man and a woman sitting in Zen meditation. The sun, the moon, and the countless stars are expressed with the circular tea-dyed leather.
Korean characters, “you and I” are shown in the installation of the rectangular canvases on the wall. I wanted to communicate with my audience, using the holy words of Buddha, coming out from the sky and the earth (ㅇ.ㅁ). Every morning before I start on my artwork, I meditate, and drink tea. I put the tea leaves on the paper and watch the traces of the tea-dye in different forms every day, and I let my artwork be in the flow of time.
The media I used for the artwork in this exhibition were mixed-media, tea-dyed Korean drum leather, which verbalizes the circles of the Eastern culture, and CDs weaved with fishing string to articulate the digital culture and online connections between people in the present.
I expressed the connection between people with threads, and installed the drum leathers to let the sound of om spread throughout the gallery. I created Korean letters with BeoSeon (Korean socks), thread and needles, which symbolize feminism in Korea, and expressed the fragrance of tea and the beauty of humanity with paper flowers.
After teaching Korean Art and Culture to the Korean American students at the Korean School for twenty eight years, I realized that I learned so much from teaching the students. Art and culture overcome any difference between culture and age.
I made a promise with myself, just like I created artwork for this exhibition, I will keep on creating my life story for my future.