2 - So Yoon Lym

So Yoon Lym
The Dreamtime
So Yoon Lym
The Dreamtime
Published 2011 by Target Gallery
National exhibition space of the Torpedo Factory Art Center
105 N. Union Street, Alexandria, Virginia 22314, USA
www.torpedofactory.org
Gallery Director: Mary Cook
Catalog Design: Allison Nance
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All artwork images in this book are copyrighted by the artist. Every effort has
been made to secure permission to reprint copyrighted material, and to verify
all information presented in the book.
First Edition
Copyright © 2011 Target Gallery
Published in the United States of America
Table of Contents
Introduction - 7
Jurors’ statements - 9
Critical essay - 11
Artwork - 13
Artist’s statement - 39
Artist’s resume - 40
Introduction
When the artists of the Torpedo Factory Art Center conceived the Target
Gallery in 1987, it was tasked with the mission to feature emerging and
established artists from all over the country in shows that would engage and
challenge the viewer. We accomplish this through a series of juried exhibitions
that are open to all artists nationally and internationally. One opportunity that
we offer annually is our Open Exhibition, which invites artists to submit exhibition proposals for a chance at a solo exhibition in the gallery. We choose a
panel of three art experts to choose the winning exhibition proposal. This year’s
distinguished juror panel included Danielle O’Steen, Washington, DC arts
writer and independent curator, Jacqueline Ionita, Gallery Director of
Hamiltonian Gallery in Washington, DC, and Tim Tate, co-founder of the
Washington Glass School, and internationally acclaimed glass artist. In addition to the honor of having a solo exhibition in a world-renowned art center, the
gallery offers the artist a show catalog.
As we approach our 9th year of offering our annual solo exhibition competition, we continue to be amazed at the exceptional work that is being presented
and the high caliber of art that is consistently being selected year after year.
For our 2011 Open Exhibition winner, we are so excited to be able to present a
wonderfully talented and beautiful painter, So Yoon Lym and her paintings, The
Dreamtime. Out of 86 proposals submitted, Lym was unanimously selected as
this year’s winner. She is presenting a series of large photorealistic black and
white acrylic paintings that depict different hair and braid styles using her high
school students as her models. Hair, for Lym, becomes a symbol for depicting
diversity and immigration in America.
The viewer will be awestruck by the amazing detail captured in each of these
paintings. Rich dialogue will ensue around this increasingly volatile and sensitive topic surrounding immigration and diversity in America today.
Thank you for taking the time to view the exhibition and for reading this show
catalog. Congratulations to So Yoon Lym for a beautiful exhibition and to the
jurors for an outstanding selection.
-Mary Cook, Target Gallery Director
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8
Jurors’ Statements
Danielle O’Steen
In So Yoon Lym’s paintings, the body is an instrument of design. Her large-scale
portraits, which show the human form from an aerial perspective, transform
braided heads into carriers of elaborate swirls, curves, and diagonals. Though
fantastical, the subjects are very real, based on students Lym encountered while
working as an art teacher at John F. Kennedy High School in Paterson, New
Jersey. But that’s just a starting point for Lym, who avoids traditional modes
of documentation by obscuring the faces and only referring to the students by
name in the titles.
In this series, Lym turns a seemingly banal subject—high school students’ hairstyles—into a thoughtful study, capturing the intricate networks that have been
pulled and stitched together to reveal the fine hairs and vulnerable scalp below
in her careful rendering. She exposes her fascination with the “living craft form”
that guides the students’ families and friends to create such diverse patterning.
All at once Lym’s paintings offer an anthropological study of America’s youth
and a history of African American hairstyles, with none of the scientific concerns
that would lead into stereotypes or a physiognomic assessment of these individuals. Instead she leads her subjects into the lineage of ancient and modern
portraiture, where such depictions address ideas of identity while showing fashion and tradition in practice.
Born in Korea but raised in New Jersey, via Uganda and Kenya, Lym has had
time to consider how visual appearance can both include and exclude those
from the culture that surrounds them. Her pictures allow the viewer to meditate on these issues and the mandalas she has created with the delicate treatment and meticulous detailing of each head. These students are not statistics
but unique entities, presented though not defined by the styles etched into their
hair. Their city or place of origin does not determine their identity, but they are
shown belonging to a greater narrative, unified under tradition, expression, and
craft. Most of all, Lym’s totemic circle of heads reveal anew a form of beauty now
eternally free from the distractions of the everyday.
Danielle O’Steen is a critic and curator working in Washington, DC. She has contributed to publications such as Washington Post Express, Art + Auction, Capitol
File, DCist, and Flash Art. She received her Masters in Art History at George
Washington University, where she organized exhibitions for Classroom 102.
This fall, her group show “Site Aperture,” will open at Flashpoint Gallery in DC.
Tim Tate
When I see So Yoon Lym’s imagery, I am immediately struck with the similarities with the symbols of language. Perhaps that is her intent, to create a new
language of contemporary society. She does so beautifully. Referencing ancient
glyphs or almost recognizable sanskrit, she gives insight to those able to read it.
Each symbol another dialog discussing urban life of today.
Tim Tate is a DC native, and has been working with glass as a sculptural me9
dium for the past 25 years. Co-founder of the Washington Glass School, Tim’s
work is in the permanent collections of a number of museums, including the
Smithsonian’s American Art Museum, Renwick Gallery, and the Mint Museum.
While Tim’s work has always been glass based, his newest works feature video
and electronic interactive elements. In 2010 he received an award from the Museum of American Glass in New Jersey as a “Rising Star of the 21st Century”.
He was featured in 2 museum shows in 2010; “The New Materiality” at the Fuller
Museum, and “Dead or Alive” at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York.
Jacqueline Ionita
So Yoon Lym creates photorealistic black and white paintings of the braided
crowns of African American heads floating in white space. Lym, of Korean decent, presents to us beautiful compositions, sensitively crossing the cultural reverences for the hair as extensions of our bodies and our lives, spiritually, socially
and physically.
So Yoon Lym’s meticulous renderings of strands of hair, weaving in and out of
a systematic landscape on the head, are always viewed from the back or top.
Presenting the viewer with the back of the head should seemingly carry tones of
disregard, apathy, or rejection, or should seemingly put the viewer in a position
to scrutinize or subjugate, however, my read of these works are not determined
by any potential power structures. So Yoon Lym’s black and white works read
as information, devoid of emotion or bias. She is acquainting us with her vicariousness and acute observations of the hairstyles of African American youth, a
group Lym works with on a daily basis. So Yoon Lym successfully and exquisitely applies philosophical principles from her own culture to the culture of another, and imparts images to us that compel us to look closer, to engage, without
hammering a political point. With these paintings, Lym has avoided pushing
any agenda, and has relayed to us her genuine wonder and delight, and we’re
prompted and interested to explore further.
Jacqueline Ionita, a painter and graduate from the Corcoran College of Art +
Design, is the Director of Hamiltonian Gallery, a new gallery in the heart of the U
Street Corridor in DC, which focuses on innovative works by emerging and midcareer artists. Ms. Ionita is also the Program Manager for Hamiltonian Artists, a
non-profit organization dedicated to the professional development of emerging
artists.
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Critical Essay
A Kind of Floating History: Paintings by So Yoon Lym
The inspiration for this body of work comes from real human figures, encountered in everyday interactions. The artist has photographed students throughout
her eight-year tenure as an art teacher at JFK High School in Paterson, New Jersey. Each image, then, no matter how abstract or lacking in direct facial features,
is a portrait. As part of the history of portraiture in this country, these images
play a significant role in the depiction of American diversity, and the effects of
popular culture and its newest traditions.
Some of the earliest images of people in the Americas are portraits of important
chieftains, scholars, and priests as well as pictures of the ordinary folk. Anonymous painters of the colonial period throughout Mexico and South America recorded the likenesses of the people of the new world in grids of figures known
as “castas” paintings. These works featured the varied racial and ethnic mixes
that resulted when Europeans, indigenous Americans and Africans intermixed.
Painters working in the United States often made portraits of Native Americans.
George Catlin’s portraits rank among the most well known, acting as a kind of visual inventory of the breadth of Native American tribes and their various physical characteristics.
A similar interest in recording specificity can be ascribed to the paintings of So
Yoon Lym, who bases each of her works on the portrait of a real individual. Taken from above, the portraits become abstracted, the features less visible or completely absent. Each title, however, records the direct relationship between the
subject and the object of the image. The dazzling patterns of the braided hairdos
become like an endless series of organic forms. Seen from this bird’s eye view,
the forms are incredibly akin to fields of corn and amber waves of grain. These
aptly named braided patterns, known commonly as cornrows, share a number
of characteristics with these landscapes of the farm. Evenly patterned, carefully
positioned, each section of hair follows a carefully defined line that is intended
to organize the organic life of the field.
Since at least the time of the Egyptians, braiding hair has been an important
part of the beauty ritual and self-presentation. Images that range from papyrus
paintings with scenes of life in ancient Egypt to archaic Greek Sculptures show
the importance of the formalized braiding of hair. The modern tradition of cornrowing hair has its origins in West Africa, where both men and women wore
their hair in braided patterns. The penchant for cornrows in the United States
developed in the 1960s and 1970s and has enjoyed resurgence in popularity
over the last five years, particularly in urban areas of the country and in Asian
and European capitals where urban American style and culture is emulated.
Ethnicity, race, and personal experience all underlie the paintings of So Yoon
Lym. Her assessment of the influence of these realities on people is summed
up in her idea for the title of the exhibition, Dreamtime. For her, dreamtime represents the idea of a suspended moment, of “people’s lives in a kind of floating
history.” This idea of the floating history is significant for the artist, in light of her
life that roved from Korea to Africa to the suburban environments and urban
centers of New Jersey. Her personal experience as an immigrant helped her to
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make connections with students who were facing similar circumstances. Hair,
the experience of hair, and hair culture in general are race, gender, and ethnospecific. The attraction of people to one another’s hair marks, over and over
again, preferences and obsessions with “good” or “bad” hair. The difference
in the color, texture, length, thickness, and coarseness of hair from one person
to the next marks its interest across cultural boundaries (1). It marks, in some
cultures, a particular distinction between “good” (or straight) hair and “bad” (or
kinky) hair.
In her personal description of leaving behind the work of pressing one’s hair flat
and the false intimacy it breeds among black women, bell hooks noted:
Later, a senior in high school, I want to wear a natural, an Afro. I want never
to get my hair pressed again. It is no longer a rite of passage, a chance to be
intimate in the world of women. The intimacy masks betrayal. Together we
change ourselves. The closeness is an embrace before parting, a gesture of
farewell to love and one another (2).
This discourse around hair and its presentation is an inextricable part of Lym’s
work. The braided locks, despite their abstract qualities, despite their perfect,
idealized look, underscore the making of particular choices. These choices don’t
require the use of a pressing comb or a chemical relaxer. Instead, they celebrate
a connection to an historic African heritage, to a power symbol from the civil
rights era, and to contemporary pride. Taken together, these image become a
powerful series of portraits that take up the difficult task of representing the invisible.
This invisibility is also relevant to things that are overlooked in nature and relates to the artist’s love of organic patterns and the flow of nature. An admirer
of the photographs of Karl Blossfeldt, Lym adapts his love of plants and their
designs to her own connection to the ebb and flow of nature. Like these patterns
that are easily missed, the artist searches out the configurations of beauty, the
figures, the forms that go unnoticed in everyday life. Linking the braided patterns of her students’ hair to these unnoticed patterns in nature, the artist makes
an astute reflection on hidden beauty. The quiet solemnity of the downturned
faces underscores this connection between pattern and identity, form and selfhood, invisibility, and presence.
Rocío Aranda-Alvarado
Associate Curator
El Museo del Barrio
New York City
(1) The Artist Recalls Her Own Experience As A Young Girl When Africanamerican Classmates Would
Play With Her Hair And Form It Into Braids, And How They Seemed To Favor Her Hair Over The Hair
Of Other Classmates (Who Were Caucasian, With Long Brown Or Blonde Hair). Today, Asian Hair,
But Particularly Korean Hair, Is Favored Over The Hair Of Any Other Ethnic Or Racial Groups For The
Making Of Human Hair Extensions. The Straight Texture, Deep Color, And Overall Strength Of Korean Hair Is Considered Superior For The Task Of Creating Complex And Lengthy Extensions.
(2) Bell Hooks, Memories Of Girlhood, (New York: Holt, 1996), P. 93.
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The Dreamtime
8.20.11 - 9.25.11
13
James
Acrylic on Paper
30 x 22 inches
2009
14
15
Mario
Acrylic on Paper
30 x 22 inches
2009
16
17
Antonio
Acrylic on Paper
30 x 22 inches
2009
18
19
Taneisha
Acrylic on Paper
30 x 22 inches
2009
20
21
Quay
Acrylic on Paper
30 x 22 inches
2010
22
23
William
Acrylic on Paper
30 x 22 inches
2010
24
25
Angel
Acrylic on Paper
30 x 22 inches
2010
26
27
Jonathan
Acrylic on Paper
30 x 22 inches
2010
28
29
Anthony
Acrylic on Paper
30 x 22 inches
2010
30
31
Jhonathan
Acrylic on Paper
30 x 22 inches
2010
32
33
Jose
Acrylic on Paper
30 x 22 inches
2010
34
35
The Dreamtime
Archival Pigment Print
Documenting 300’ x 450’ tractor drawn grass field in Leaf River, Illinois
41 x 31 inches
2010
36
37
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Artist’s Statement
The Dreamtime is inspired by the Aboriginal stories and visions of creation. Each braided pattern, carried by the students, is a map of the ancient universe,
a topographical palimpsest of the world in pattern: valleys, mountains, forests,
oceans, rivers, streams. The painter and the hair-braider lay down their marks
like their predecessor creator beings, carving and inscribing, creating and being,
in turn, created by their labor. These braid patterns are the language for the
new aboriginal, the transplanted and deterritorialized nomad. The braid patterns both record journeys to the present and represent cartographical longings;
they are a stamp of entry into a brave new world order while simultaneously
remembering prehistory.
In the age of GPS, cell phones tracking movement, and satellite surveillance
with biometric scanning recognition, the modern day Aboriginal wears his
location like an image-text on his head. While previously, the imperative of the
logo-centric perspective of the Renaissance artist afforded the viewer and the
image-maker the semblance of control and superiority over nature, the aerial
perspective--this view from above--reminds us that we are neither all seeing, nor
all knowing, that we desire the release of our fascist egos.
The Dreamtime is present time for the hair braiders and the Aboriginal students. They are the weavers of patterns, who recover the mythical past of the natural
world and its creation through the transmission of age old signs and images. Via these image-making practices, we are retracing the energy of the Dreamtime
beings in order to be able “to tap into the power of the land and these Ancestral
Beings” (McKnight, 32)
*David McKnight, Lardil, keepers of the Dreamtime (Chronicle Books, 1995)
About the Artist
So Yoon Lym was born in Seoul, Korea in 1967. After 7 years in East Africa, she
and her family emigrated to the US where they settled in northern New Jersey. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting from Rhode Island School of
Design, and a Masters of Fine Art Arts in painting from Columbia University. She lives and works in New Jersey.
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Artist’s Resume
SO YOON LYM
201.606.3729 [email protected] www.soyoonlym.com
Education
September 1989-May 1991: MFA in Painting: Columbia University (New York, NY)
September 1985-May 1989: BFA in Painting: Rhode Island School of Design (Providence, RI)
________________________________________________________________________
Solo & Two Person Exhibitions
2012
Hall of Fame Gallery: Bronx Community College: Infinity III: The Dreamtime (Bronx, NY)
2011
Korn Gallery: Drew University: The Dreamtime II (Madison, NJ)
Target Gallery: Torpedo Factory Art Center: The Dreamtime (Alexandria, VA)
Arthur M. Berger Gallery: Manhattanville College: Urban Patterns (Purchase, NY)
Nancy Dryfoos Gallery: Kean University: Infinity: The Dreamtime (Union, NJ)
2010
Paterson Museum: The Dreamtime: Hair and Braid Pattern Paintings (Paterson, NJ)
2008
Gallery Xpose: as above as below, as within as without, (Englewood Cliffs, NJ)
2006
Passaic County Community College Art Galleries: Drawings & Paintings (Paterson, NJ)
Group Exhibitions
2011
SOMArts Cultural Center: Man as Object, Reversing the Gaze (San Francisco, CA)
Paul Robeson Galleries at Rutgers University: Lift Off: Earthlings and the Great Beyond (Newark, NJ)
Sheer Madeness Gallery: Down Street Art 2011: A Social Geography of Hair (North Adams,
MA)
Aljira: A Center For Contemporary Art: Studio Montclair: Viewpoints (Newark, NJ), Honorable
Mention
Pen & Brush: Award Winner’s Private Exhibition (New York, NY)
One Bergen County Plaza Gallery: Bergen County Women Artists: My View (Hackensack, NJ)
New Century Artists Gallery: Hidden Cities (New York, NY)
Walsh Gallery: Seton Hall University: Portraiture: Inside Out (South Orange, NJ)
Therese A. Maloney Gallery: College of St. Elizabeth: Visual Phrasing (Morristown, NJ)
Visual Arts Center of New Jersey: 25th Annual International Juried Exhibition (Summit, NJ),
Merit Award
Women’s Studies Research Center: Brandeis University: Insatiable: Our Rapacious Appetite For
More (Waltham, MA)
Ben Shahn Gallery: William Paterson University: American Impressions (Wayne, NJ)
Target Gallery: Mixing Bowl (Alexandria, VA)
Monmouth Museum: 32nd juried Art Exhibition (Lincroft, NJ) Award Winner
George Segal Gallery: Montclair State University: Art Connections 7 (Montclair, NJ)
2010
Gallery Korea: Korean Cultural Service of NY: Thinking Beyond the Pattern (New York, NY)
Walsh Gallery: Seton Hall University: Driving Without Destination (South Orange, NJ)
Therese A. Maloney Gallery: College of St. Elizabeth: Who We Are: Contemporary Portraits
(Morristown, NJ)
April-June 2010: Monmouth Museum: Art on Paper (Lincroft, NJ)
Jersey City Museum: Hair Tactics (Jersey City, NJ)
Morris Council of the Arts: Emerging Patterns (Morristown, NJ)
Visual Arts Center of New Jersey: 24th Annual International Juried Exhibition (Summit, NJ),
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Honorable Mention
George Segal Gallery: Montclair State University: Art Connections 6 (Montclair, NJ)
HP Gallery at Calumet Photographic: 2009 National Photography Competition (New York, NY)
Honorable Mention
Paul Robeson Galleries at Rutgers University: The Exquisite Corpse (Newark, NJ)
2009
The Brennan Gallery: Metropolitan Memories (Jersey City, NJ)
September-November 2009: Therese A. Maloney Gallery at the College of St. Elizabeth: The
Spirit of Charity (Morristown, NJ)
Xavier University: Art at the X 2009 (Cincinnati, OH)
Pen & Brush: 2009 Fall Brush Exhibition (New York, NY)
SOHO Photo: 2009 National Photography Competition (New York, New York)
Pen & Brush: Contemporary Expressions (New York, NY), First Prize Winner
Indiana University School of Fine Arts Gallery: 4th Annual Kinsey Institute Juried Art Show
(Bloomington, IN)
Limner Gallery: Art Biologic (Hudson, NY)
Gallery 125: The Summer Show (Trenton, NJ)
The Trenton City Museum: Salon at Artworks (Trenton, NJ)
The Trenton City Museum: Ellarslie Open XXVII (Trenton, NJ)
Morris Museum: 2009 New Jersey Arts Annual (Morristown, NJ)
Pen & Brush: In Your Dreams (New York, NY)
George Segal Gallery: Montclair State University: Continuum (Montclair, NJ)
The Brennan Gallery: Woman to Woman (Jersey City, NJ)
The Visual Arts Center of New Jersey: 23rd Annual International Juried Exhibition (Summit, NJ)
The Brennan Gallery: African Americana (Jersey City, NJ)
Morris Council of the Arts: New Jersey Green (Morristown,NJ)
Katonah Museum of Art: Contemporary Confrontations (Katonah, NY)
George Segal Gallery: Montclair State University: Art Connections 5 (Montclair, NJ)
Passaic County Community College Art Galleries: Inspiration Paterson (Paterson, NJ)
2008
Ridgewood Art Institute: New Jersey Watercolor Society (Ridgewood, NJ)
Therese A. Maloney Art Gallery: College of St. Elizabeth: Calculating Mathematics (Morristown,
NJ)
Paterson Museum: First Annual Great Falls Art Exhibition (Paterson, NJ), First Prize Winner
Therese A. Maloney Art Gallery: College of St. Elizabeth: Inside & Out (Morristown, NJ)
2007
New Academic Building Galleries: Fairleigh Dickinson University: Dodge Art Fellows (Florham
Park, NJ)
Awards
May-June 2011: Vermont Studio Center Full Fellowship Award
April 2011-April 2012: Lower Eastside Printshop Keyholder Residency
September-October 2005: Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation Artist Fellowship Grant
Publications
2011
Paterson Literary Review: Volume 39: Introductory Page and 5 page Art Inclusion
Cabinet Magazine: Volume 40: HAIR issue
Hidden Cities: Women’s Caucus for Art: Juried by Lisa Phillips, New Museum of Contemporary
Art, NYC
Gallery Korea: Call For Artists 2010 Catalog: Korean Cultural Service of New York
2010
A Kind of Floating History: by Rocio Aranda-Alvarado (Text for The Dreamtime: Hair and Braid
Pattern Paintings)
1000 Artisan Textiles: by Sandra Salamony and Gina M. Brown (Rockport Publishers/Quarry
Books)
Studio Visit Magazine: Volume 8
41
2009
Studio Visit Magazine: Volume 6
Exquisite Corpse: Paul Robeson Galleries 30th Anniversary Catalog: Rutgers University (Newark, NJ)
Paterson Literary Review: Volume 37: Introductory Page Painting
2008
Studio Visit Magazine: Volume 4
2005
Transcultural New Jersey: Diverse Artists Shaping Culture and Identities: Rutgers University
Press: Volume II
2000
Print Magazine: Juried Inclusion in Best of 2000 Annual
Slide Files
The Drawing Center (New York, NY)
White Columns (New York, NY)
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