Blabbable Doodads
April 27th - June 2nd, 2007
Installations and Animations by Miriam Dym and Eunjun Hwang
Curated by Studio Islander Mayumi Hamanaka and Taro Hattori
MISSION 17 presents Blabbable Doodads, an exhibition of installation-work by Miriam Dym (Berkeley) and vector-graphic animation by Eunjung Hwang (New York).
The great narratives, which once organized modern life have broken down into fragmentary micro-narratives, each of which “blabs†by itself with innumerable links to other narratives in its own apparently arbitrary system. The experience is schizophrenic. Meanings seem to hide behind cryptic images, which permeate the contemporary world with a sometimes overwhelming intensity. The artists in this show seize upon this ecstatic experience and thematize it in self-referential systems, riddled with minutia.
Miriam Dym shows a room-like installation with a vinyl canopy, carpets and objects. She cuts out everyday materials (fabrics, carpet, plywood, etc.) into curvy forms and patterns, vividly colors them, and constructs a magically delusional but whimsical world. One finds oneself mesmerized by a sense of vertigo in this "disintegrated" field, which traces the boundaries between mundane life and illusions, as well as two and three dimensionality. Quotidian scraps generate visionary images, and a joyful, seemingly endless series of ruined meanings and orders.
Eunjung Hwang shows a collection video and print works from her "Fabulous Creature" series. Line-drawn in a super-flat, naive style, Eunjung's characters and machines float and fly in a fluoroscopic landscape. With overly manipulated squeaky voices, they kill, eat and destroy each other, or otherwise escape and cry around in a never-ending abyss of non-narrative sequences. All the cruel scenes are seamlessly but incoherently linked, and deprived of any meaningful weight, despite their persistent mystery, and threads of sexual and cultural terror.
- Taro Hattori and Mayumi Hamanaka
Artists Bios:
Berkeley-based artist, Miriam Dym received her MFA at Columbia University and BA at Yale University, and has taught in UC Berkeley and Stanford University. She is the recipient of Kala Art Institute Fellowship, Berkeley and Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, France. Her work has been exhibited at numerous venues including Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; San Jose Museum of Art, CA; POST, Los Angeles; Pierogi, Brooklyn; Guggenheim Gallery, Orange, CA.
Korean-born New York-based artist, Eunjung Hwang received her MFA in Computer Arts at the School of Visual Arts, New York. Her animations and new media works have been shown at a number of exhibitions and festivals, including X FEST experimental video festival, New York; Stuttgarter Filmwinter, Stuttgart, Germany; Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin; [d]vison-Festival for Digital Culture, Vienna, Austria; File: Electronic Language International Festival, Sao Paulo, Brazil; Her awards include the UNESCO-Aschberg bursary for artists, Kala Art Institute, Berkeley; the Award of the State Capital Stuttgart for New Media, Germany.
