Crossover: East and West

The Korean Cultural Center Washington, D.C. proudly presents Crossover: East and West, a new group exhibition opening Feb. 2 featuring ceramic, installation, painting, and video art that question and inform the Asian immigrant experience in America through the works of four accomplished Korean American artists: Victoria Jang, Christina Ko, Jang Soon Im, and Eun Kyung Suh.

Crossover explores the relationship between common notions of Eastern and Western culture from a Korean-American perspective and the effects of cross-cultural phenomena on individuals and minority groups in society. Set between two timely and important occasions, Korean American Day in the U.S. on Jan. 13 and Korea’s traditional Lunar New Year holiday which falls on Feb. 16 in 2018, this exhibition presents a diverse array of art that visualizes current cultural and social issues in terms of both Korean contemporary identity and past heritage.

Admission to the opening reception event including talks by the artists on Friday, Feb. 2 at 6:00 p.m. is free and open to the public, but registration is required (below). Crossover will remain on view through Mar. 9, 2018. 

WHAT: Art exhibition, artist talks, & public opening reception

WHO: Victoria Jang, Christina Ko, Jang Soon Im, Eun Kyung Suh

WHEN: Opening Reception: Friday, February, 2 at 6:00 pm

On View: Feb.2 – Mar. 9, 2018 (open M-F, 9am-noon & 1:30-5:30pm)

WHERE: Korean Cultural Center Washington, D.C. (2370 Massachusetts Ave. NW)

HOW: 

RSVP HERE to the opening reception! 

Or visit during regular walk-in hours. 

NOTE: Doors open at 5:30 pm for the opening reception event, and the program starts at 6:00 pm, including artist talks, 6:00-6:30 pm.

About the Artists

Victoria Jang’s work embodies a complex cultural hybridization. The multicultural environment and various racial experiences of immigrants in the United States are depicted through her ceramic and gold luster works Intercontinental Migration and Entangle, which incorporate expressive yet atypical and sometimes distorted forms of human figures. Jang abstractly transforms Korean traditional ceramic techniques such as Buncheong, which features inlaid crane patterns as a symbol of luck and longevity in Korean culture, combining these with her own unique identity having grown up in both Korean and African-American communities.

Victoria Jang is a sculptor, mixed media artist and designer. Jang earned her BFA in 3D4M in 2010 at the University of Washington in Seattle and her MFA at California College of the Arts in San Francisco in 2014. Jang received the Headlands Center for the Arts Fellowship, the Retired Professor’s Award by the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts, Murphy Cadogan Contemporary Arts Award. Jang is represented at Patricia Sweetow Gallery in Oakland, California and completed an academic term as the visiting artist in Ceramics at University of California, Berkeley this past year. Recently, Jang received the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design Teaching Fellowship and is full time faculty in Ceramics and First Year Experience at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland. For more information, visit www.victoria-jang.com. 

Victoria Jang

Entangle, Ceramic and gold luster, 25x14x14', 2017

Christina Ko observes and explores the invisible cultural borders between East and West. In this exhibition, her work targets popular culture by highlighting images of girls and the supposed culture of cuteness characterized by exaggerated notions of femininity. Her works Outside is Cute and Domestic Memories of Korea incorporate pastel colored collages and paintings of everyday objects to convey this deeper subject. She also questions the cultural identity of Asian women, often reduced to young, innocent, and pure images, and ponders the formation of their unique personal backgrounds within contemporary Western societies.

Christina Ko received her BFA from Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning in 2013 and has exhibited her work in Ithaca, NY, in and around New York City, and in London. Ko was Artist in Residence for the 2015 AICAD Studio Practice Residency in Brooklyn, NY, took part in the Cornell University studio visits and critiques for BFA Thesis students, and was a 2013 Culture Hall featured artist. She currently lives and works in Queens, NY. For more information, visit www.christinayunako.com.

Jang Soon Im researches common images of tradition and culture whose substance has been transformed and reprocessed by modern society. His series Whitewashed looks at how contemporary Western culture interprets Oriental tradition from its own perspective, and speaks to the phenomenon of transforming, reproducing, and consuming those original images to fit other public and social tastes. He asks his audience to question what traditions they really know, and how those concepts came about, given layers of interpretation. Through his work audiences can explore the role of individuals and society as a whole in this process.

Jang Soon Im received his MFA in Drawing and Painting from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) in 2010 and his BFA in Asian Painting from Seoul National University in 2003. He has been exhibited in Houston, Los Angeles,Chicago, New York, Kanazawa, and Seoul. Im completed residency programs at the Core program, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Macdowell Colony, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, and Vermont Studio Center (VSC). He was awarded a Marin Fellowship from VSC, a Houston Artadia Award in 2012, and a James Nelson Raymond Fellowship from SAIC in 2010. For more information, visit www.imjangsoon.com.

Eun Kyung Suh studies the cultural, linguistic,social, and economic discrepancies that humans have experienced when moving to new environments. She examines the experiences of individuals and families, especially immigrants and Korean adoptees, in terms of cultural memory and history, and suggests a path to maintain traditions in balance with adaptation. In this exhibition Suh examines the assimilation process of immigrants by presenting Rainbow, a video work of interviews with Korean adoptees, and Enclave, an installation work that visualizes individuals’ national identity formation within ethnic enclaves.

Eun Kyung Suh received her MFA in Design from the University of Iowa in 2002 and her BA from Ewha Woman's University and is currently professor in the Department of Art and Design at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis, MN, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Conrad Wilde Gallery in Tucson, AZ, Nord Gallery in San Antonio, TX, Galerie sei-un-do in Zurich, Switzerland, Montreal Center for Contemporary Textiles in Montreal, Canada, and Barabas Villa Gallery in Budapest, Hungary. Her textile work was published in Textiles: The Art of Mankind by Mary Schoeser Thames & Hudson(2012). For more information, visit www.d.umn.edu/~esuh.