Recent Exhibition
Michele Kong +Yosuke Ito
Circulation
January 27 -February 11, 2012
Reception:Thursday, Feb 2, 18:00 - 20:00
44-02 23rd Street
Long Island City, NY 11101
Tel. 718-729-2988
Gallery hours: Wednesday-Saturday 12-6pm
Circulation
With upheavalspreading around the world, what can we make of our current global situation?Like looking in a mirror every morning, we may check numerous sources ofinformation. Onone hand, in Japan we witnessed that everybody could experience weakness, loss andsuffering from unexpected circumstances - the great earthquake and tsunami. Morerecently we saw the Occupy protests spreading from Wall Street to locations all over theworld. They seem to cry out for recovering some common ground, both material and spiritual.
These incidents show images in a mirror that is not always stable and flat. Fact was notreflected in the mirror, more perhaps somewhere between the incidents and the reflections.If the mirror that we look into each morning does not reflect fact, then is the mirror evenreal? Now, everything is in interconnected,circulating on a global scale and has thepossibility to be upset.
Art has a function to rouse people to look at the structures of the current world andshowsomething in between. This two-person show creates a dialogue and exchange of ideasbetween artists Michele Kong (NY) and Yosuke Ito (Tokyo).
This light-based exhibition is best viewed after sunset.
Collaborator Michele Kong
For several years, Michele Kong created large-scale sculptural installations inspired bystructures in nature and focusing attention on things found in plain sight. Such works havebeen included in exhibitions at a variety of art venues including: PS 1 Contemporary ArtCenter(NY), BemisCenterfor Contemporary Art (NE), Arlington Arts Center (VA), MarylandArt Place (MD), Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts (DE), to name just a few. In2009, Kong expanded her artistic practice and began experimenting with narrative in shortvideo projects. Several fellowships including the Fine Arts Work Center, Yaddo, VirginiaCenter for the Creative Arts, and other programs supported this new body of work.Additionally a 2009 Creative Artist Exchange Fellowship, awarded by the Japan-USFriendship Commission/NEA, contributed to the production of collaborative works includingthe work on view in this exhibition, The Space Between.