Curated by Midori Yoshimoto, Ph.D.

These two exhibitions, The World Between, by Heejung Kim, and Stages of Mourning, by Sarah Pucill, enables an unexpected, cross-cultural encounter of two women artists living and working across the Atlantic Ocean, in Northeast America and England.”

Fairbanks Gallery features fifteen sculptural books created by the Korean-American artist Heejung Kim in the last 10 years. Inspired by East-Asian traditions of books in various forms, Kim’s books are unconventionally sculptural, most of which are made of mixed media, such as, tree branches, cloth, pins, and other found objects. Filled with allusions to the Buddhist symbolism of life, death, and rebirth, her books function as the world between, bridging our profane and spiritual worlds where the viewer can travel freely.

In the adjacent West Gallery, the viewer is invited to another transitional world produced by British artist Sarah Pucill. Her film Stages of Mourning (2004), here shown as a DVD projection on a wall, presents the intense psychological process that one experiences trying to cope with the death of the loved one. Interlacing complex images of herself and her late partner appearing in mirrored reflections, photographs, film projection, and computer, the film blurs the boundaries between reality and reproduction, and life and death. Experiencing these two different worlds, the viewers can further their personal meditations on the meaning of life.

Heejung Kim

Heejung Kim is primarily a sculptor and painter based in New Jersey. Born in South Korea in the 1960s, Heejung Kim moved to the United States in 1989. In addition to M.F.A. from Duk-Sung Women’s University in Seoul, Kim holds M.A. in art education from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an M.F.A. from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. She currently teaches various artmaking classes at New Jersey City University, the Korean Daily Cultural Center, and the Bronx School of Music and Art. Besides numerous solo and group exhibitions, mainly in the Northeast America and Korea, she also recently served as art director for the Korean American adaptation of the Mozart opera The Magic Flute presented in Flushing, New York.

Since 1993 Kim has produced handmade books and wrapped sculptures that employ unexpected materials such as pins and branches of trees. Graveyard Offering II is her interpretation of the cemeteries, which are often represented in Tibetan Buddhist mandalas. Graveyard symbolizes not only “the mundane world in which we live,” but also the “purification of eight aspects of consciousness,” which are embodied by tree branches wrapped in white cloth. The number of eggs embedded inside the wrapping refers to the Buddhist notion of eight sufferings and desires that human experience in their lives. The eggs also represent seeds of life, while the branches resemble bones. Through sewing each of these eggs and branches in fabric, Kim meditates on the meaning of life and death and our existence in the universe.

http://www.heejungkim-art.com/index.htm

Sarah Pucill

Sarah Pucill is a filmmaker and photographer based in London. She is a Senior Lecturer of the Fine Art Mixed Media BA at University of Westminster. She studied Fine Art-Media at the Slade School of Art in London (Postgraduate Diploma, 1990) and Visual Theory at the University of East London (M.A., 1997). Her films and related photographic works have been exhibited in museums, film festivals and galleries internationally. Her retrospective screenings include the Tate Britain, the Lux, and 291 Gallery. Her photographs are in the Saatchi collection and her recent images from Stages of Mourning are included in Masquerade, a publication on women’s photographic self portraiture. Her film You Be Mother won the experimental award at the Oberhausen Short Film Festival (Germany, 1991) and the innovation award at the Atlanta Short Film Festival (USA, 1995). Forthcoming screening and exhibitions include “Intervention” at Fieldgate Gallery, London (2007) and “Mother Cuts,” New Jersey City University Galleries (2008). Her films have been funded by the Arts Council of England, London Production Fund, Carlton TV, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and distributed through Canyon Cinema, CFMDC, NY Filmmakers’ Coop, BFI and LUX.

Pucill’s individual cinematic language emergedin the 1990s in the context of visual arts and experimental film. Her films and photographs explore the mirroring and merging we seek in the Other; a sense of self which is transformative and fluid. Her work is concerned with the idea that as subjects we are not separate where surfaces of inside and outside, animate and inanimate draw together. Focusing on the materiality of film and the body, her films probe unsettling worlds of mirror and surface. Currently in development is Pucill’s ninth film for gallery and cinema. The Sun’s in My Eyes (16mm, 25min; color, sound) is about fear of death, about struggling to look at the sun as a metaphor for what we can or cannot hold on to without our own existence being threatened.

Midori Yoshimoto (Ph.D. Rutgers University, 2002) curated this exhibit.

Curator’s Statement

These two exhibitions, The World Between, and Stages of Mourning, enables an unexpected, cross-cultural encounter of two women artists living and working across the Atlantic Ocean, in Northeast America and England.”

Fairbanks Gallery features fifteen sculptural books created by the Korean-American artist Heejung Kim in the last 10 years. Inspired by East-Asian traditions of books in various forms, Kim’s books are unconventionally sculptural, most of which are made of mixed media, such as, tree branches, cloth, pins, and other found objects. Filled with allusions to the Buddhist symbolism of life, death, and rebirth, her books function as the world between, bridging our profane and spiritual worlds where the viewer can travel freely.

In West Gallery the viewer is invited to another transitional world produced by British artist Sarah Pucill. Her film Stages of Mourning (2004), here shown as a DVD projection on a wall, presents the intense psychological process that one experiences trying to cope with the death of the loved one. Interlacing complex images of herself and her late partner appearing in mirrored reflections, photographs, film projection, and computer, the film blurs the boundaries between reality and reproduction, and life and death. Experiencing these two different worlds, the viewers can further their personal meditations on the meaning of life.