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Review by Lily Wei
Junghi Han is an abstract artist with a mixed cultural heritage, an increasingly common phe- nomenon in our ever shrinking, interconnected world. She was born in Korea and lived there for 24 years before moving to Europe and the United States and now resides in Long Island, New York. Exploring that mix more closely has become her subject of late; "it was time." she said, "to deal with my Asian, European and American histories." Reflecting her new focus, her work-itself often a hybrid, a combination of painting and sculpture that frequently incorporates found objects-is currently in a state of transition as she experiments with more open and encompassing resolutions. Han is interested in Buddhist practices for her process and Christianity for ideology and iconography -although often abstracted-which is another juxtaposition of East and West. Spirituality more and more pervades her work, although she is private about her beliefs and the sense of religion manifested in her work is evident as an ambience, meditation or inclination more than as a dogma. Nonetheless, her spiritual practice is crucial to her enterprise and she wants that to be apparent to the viewer. Multiple readings of images are also desired and because of that, Han refuses to title her works, invoking a modernist trope, although autobiographical as well as other narratives are embedded in her project. Han's content and style blend Eastern and Western influences in ways that are difficult to dis- entangle. For instance, her brushstroke suggests Abstract Expressionism, calligraphic markings and Eastern painting, but classic calligraphy and Asian brushwork, with its emphasis on the spontaneous, the tracing of the moment and breathing, influenced the Abstract Expressionists who in turn influenced modern and contemporary Asian artists in a circular, reciprocal interac- ton. Formerly, Han preferred a flat canvas but her newer paintings are more object-like and suggest, at times, Russian icons. These quietly lyrical abstract paintings are also quite physi- cal, their edges beveled and several inches deep, projecting the surface plane outward, away from the wall, which establishes an entirely different relationship between the work and the viewer. Han also makes three-dimensional painted constructs and architectural assemblages, using found objects, which is more or less a Western strategy but one that is now global. One such work is a wooden relief that resembles a boat flattened against the wall. Rotated 90 degrees, we look into it from above, as it were, a point of view she uses often. (Han also hangs her paintings low so that we look down into them for a more omniscient vantage point.) In the boat is a cast-off sandal, a few horseshoe crab shells, strips of wood, netting filled with detritus seaweed, dried grasses and a wooden oar. The interior is splashed and brushed with white paint and a vivid, gorgeous turquoise. Shades of white and blue dominate her paintings, symbolic of continuity and regeneration. The white is redemptive, pure, the blue hopeful, joyous, like sea, sky, the elements of air and water, continuity and resurrection, a significance also em- bodied by the boat, an ark with an invisible covenant. She would like her paintings to offer solace and hope and believes that the process of making them is correlated to the process of life, with its trials and triumphs. Another work approximates a cross, each large, tray-shaped panel a painting in its own right, with beautifully brushed and textured surfaces in white and pale earth colors splattered with blue, green, a section of ripped tire, a frayed, emblematic rope Han often installs her paintings in a grid; one such group is a two-tiered construction with three panels extending almost 9' and could go on, it seems, indefinitely, with its implication of infinity. This group is dark blue streaked with white, wonderfully painted, with translucent and matte patches, its surface textures varied, from the raised and gritty (seeds and small mounds of scattered paint) to the velvety or luminous and suggests a star-studded celestial landscape of indeterminate scope.
Junghi Han's paintings and painted installations are a testament to her deeply felt convictions. Her abstractions, ultimately not so abstract, are vehicles for the spiritual, a distillation and summation of her wide-ranging and varied experiences. By means of meticulously crafted paintings -an act of faith in both art and religion- she has transformed materiality into some
thing much more intangible, much more rapturous.
Lillu Wei Lilly Wei is a New York-based independent curator, essayist and critic who writes regularly for Art in America and is a contributing editor at ARTnews and Art Asia Pacific.