The Front : NEWS ARTISTS ABOUT ARCHIVE CONTACT LINKS
Thursday October 28th @ 7 pm
Art Criticism & Writing
Get ready for another installment of Back Talk at The Front, a series of monthly lectures focused on topics important to the cultural community of New Orleans. This month, join us for a panel discussion on Arts Writing and Criticism with Eric Bookhardt, Adam Falik, Rashida Ferdinand, Doug McCash, Ylva Rouse, and our moderator Cynthia Scott.
October 9- November 7
Room 1: Yoonmi Nam
Book of Rocks, Flowers, and Birds
The exhibition title Book of Rocks, Flowers, and Birds refers to the titles of different chapters in the book Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting, which is a 17th century Chinese painting manual that I reference in my work. Since 2005, I have been working on black and white sumi ink drawings based on techniques outlined in traditional Chinese painting manuals. Although I was born and raised in South Korea, my art education emphasized Western art and art history. Only after years of living in America did I come to realize the importance of Asian cultural traditions. Since then, I have been re-exposing myself to my cultural history and re-teaching myself to paint using traditional Asian brush painting techniques. My desire is not to become a traditional painter. Rather, it is to use traditional techniques to express the sense of estrangement I have often felt living in Eastern and Western cultures. In my drawings I depict a transitional existence in which ideas and states of being cannot quite be determined to be this or that, but hover uncomfortably somewhere in between.
Yoonmi Nam was born and raised in Seoul, South Korea, spending part of her youth in Canada. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Printmaking from Hongik University in Seoul, Korea. She moved to America to study at the Rhode Island School of Design, where she received a Master of Fine Arts degree in Painting and Printmaking in 2000. Her work considers the cross-cultural experience and sense of transience through prints, installations and drawings. Her recent research interests include the study of traditional ink paintings and woodblock prints from East Asia, including those from Japan, Korea, China, and Tibet. To this end, Yoonmi has traveled and lectured in China, and lived and worked in Japan, Korea and Tibet. She has received numerous grants and fellowships to support her research and travel. Most recent grants include, the Hall Center Creative Work Fellowship, the Kansas Arts Commission Mid-Career Artist Fellowship, the Center for East Asian Studies International Research Travel Grant and the Ngwang Choephel Fellowship from the U.S. State Department. Her work has been shown both nationally and internationally including countries such as Japan, New Zealand, Scotland, Korea, Bulgaria and Paraguay. Currently, she teaches printmaking and drawing at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas, where she has been a faculty member since 2001.
Room 2: Jeremy Drummond and Hoang Pham
Counter Cartographies
Rather than presenting geographic truths, Jeremy Drummond and Hoang Pham’s recent project entitled Counter Cartographies, blurs delineation. In this ongoing series of drawings, collages, and digital images, relationships between nations and territories are reconfigured into alternative worldviews. Through this transformative process, physical and ideological proximities begin to shift. In our globalized world, the distance between nations continues to lose significance yet divisions pertaining to culture, conflict, economics and ecology remain. Whether negating contested boundaries, introducing unlikely neighbors, or hinting towards global concerns; the works comprising Counter Cartographies blend fact and fiction within an open-ended narrative structure.
Jeremy Drummond is a Canadian artist based in Richmond, VA and Toronto, ON. His work has been exhibited internationally in festivals, galleries and museums. Since 2005, Drummond’s work has focused upon issues surrounding landscape development, cultural diversity, and mediated experience within contemporary manufactured environments. Consistent throughout all of his work is the relationship between people and their environment, both on an intimate level and a grand scale. Drummond is represented by ADA Gallery and teaches in the Department of Art & Art History at the University of Richmond.
Hoang Pham was born in Vietnam and immigrated to the United States in 1982. Her work takes on forms of drawing, print media, and installation and deals with phenomena surrounding travel, memory, and its temporal representations. Pham’s current body of work explores the imperfect, and self-contradictory nature of what is perceived as natural and balanced, with reference to plants and body. Her work has been exhibited within Canada and the United States. Hoang Pham currently lives and works in Richmond, VA and Philadelphia, PA.
Room 3
Precious Horshes
Young artists exhibiting work for the first time in New Orleans. Featuring two-dimensional work by James Concannon, Jacob Edwards, Emily Erb, Jeff Dentz, Brendan Gavin, Pete Gavin, and Phil Rached. Curated by Dave Greber.
Room 4: Dave Webber
5and4
This exhibition features Webber's new body of work exploring multi-channel video installation. This series is an investigation of the familiar everyday scenes of his surroundings and an exploration of visual relationships through superimposition.
While working in many media, David Webber is an artist who primarily works with time-based media and interactive installations. In his spare time he creates analog synthesizers and makes electro-acoustic music. Hailing from the Philadelphia region, he is now transplanted into Lafayette, where he is a Assistant Professor of Media Art at University of Louisiana.