Press Releases
Eunjung Hwang: Three Thousand Revisits
Ati Maier: Event Horizon
February 1 through April 2, 2011
New Work by Multi-media Artists Eunjung Hwang and Ati Maier featured at the University Art Museum, University at Albany
The artists will be present for the opening reception on Tuesday, February 1, 5:00-7:00 p.m.
Free and open to the public.
ALBANY, NY--- The University Art Museum is pleased to present recent work by multi-media artists, Eunjung Hwang and Ati Maier. In their respective explorations into new narrative forms and spatial realms, both Hwang and Maier begin with the hand sketch and further their vision through the use of sophisticated digital editing programs. Both artists reflect a new sensibility in contemporary art in which traditional art practices fluidly merge with advanced technology. The results are at once familiar and totally fresh.
The museum’s first floor will feature drawings, animations, video projections, and inflated sculptures by Eunjung Hwang who will also create an onsite installation incorporating animation with sound and sculptural elements. Her work centers around a family of quasi-figurative characters derived from personal dreams. She also channels a gamut of art historical and pop sources including Hieronymus Bosch, Harry Darger, B-movies, comic books and the super-natural. All her works begin with a hand-sketch which she then “re-draws” on the computer and transforms into digital prints, books, animations, or installations. The animations in particular have a rhythmic narrative structure that eschews a legible storyline in favor of something more primordial and instinctive. The images that emerge form an oddly twisted world in which unruly behaviors often lead to darker forms of violence. In constant motion, Hwang's characters lead us through an id-driven world in which the follies of the human condition are played out as they mutate, make love, eat, defecate, and kill with equal abandon.
The museum’s second floor will feature paintings, drawings and two new video animations by Ati Maier. In a dizzying amalgam of saturated colors, multiple lines, warped spaces, and swirling movements, Maier depicts hybrid landscapes that explode the conventions of traditional painting while still maintaining a connection to art historical and scientific sources as varied as Der Blau Reiter, the Situationists, satellite imagery, and geological models. Recently, Maier has developed her drawings and paintings further into 3D video animation. By deconstructing her lines and activating them into a new spatial realm, she is able to produce the sensation of moving through the landscape of one of her paintings. Maier’s interest in the Situationist’s practices of the dérive and the drift, are reflected in her insistence on never allowing a predetermined course to dictate the outcome of her paintings or videos.
Born in Seoul, Korea in 1971, Eunjung Hwang lives and works in New York City. Selected solo exhibitions include 1,3,8 Characters at NY Studio Gallery in New York (2009); Eunjung Hwang at LA Center for Digital Arts in Los Angeles (2008); and Creature Feature at Sungkok Art Museum in Seoul, Korea (2007). Selected festivals & group exhibitions include Transmediale10 in Berlin, Germany (2010); Analog Animation at the Drawing Center in New York (2006); and International Media Award for Science and Art at ZKM in Germany (2005). Hwang received the New York State Council on Arts Grant (2006) and the Principal Prize of the 50th International Short Film Festival in Oberhausen, Germany (2004); and 16th Stuttgart Filmwinter - Festival for Expanded Media in Stuttgart, Germany (2003).
Born in Munich Germany in 1962, Ati Maier lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Solo exhibitions include Nusser & Baumgart Gallery in Munich, Germany (2011); Pierogi Gallery in Brooklyn, New York (2010); Space Rider at Dogenhaus Galerie in Leipzig, Germany (2009); Volta 5 Basel at Dogenhaus Galerie in Basel, Switzerland (2009); and PERPETUAL IF (Information Friction) at Städtische Galerie Wolfsburg in Wolfsburg, Germany (2008- 2009). Selected group exhibitions include appropriate manipulate duplicate at Gallery Joe in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (2010); Fokus Lodz Biennale in Lodz, Poland (2010); Drawings at McKenzie Fine Art in New York (2009); Crème, No Sugar at Pierogi Gallery in Brooklyn, New York (2009); Hypothetical Landscapes at Janet Kurnatowsky Gallery in Brooklyn, New York (2009) and Remote Viewing at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (2005).
The exhibition and related publications are made possible with support from the UAlbany Office of the President, Office of the Provost, The University at Albany Foundation, University Auxiliary Services (UAS), The Community Foundation for the Capital Region’s Nancy Hyatt Liddle Fund for the Arts, and the Ellsworth Kelly Foundation, and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
For further information, please call 518-442-4035 or visit our website at www.albany.edu/museum.
New Museum Hours: Tuesday 10 a.m. – 8 p.m.; Wednesday - Friday, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.;
Saturday noon – 4 p.m.
Free parking in visitor lot #1 off Collins Circle on Saturdays and for museum events is provided courtesy of the Provost’s Office.
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Contact: Naomi Lewis, Outreach Coordinator, nlewis@albany.edu, 518.442.4038