Celebrating Asian Art

September 7-December 10, 2022
Charles B. Wang Center Skylight Gallery, Zodiac Gallery

Curated by Jinyoung A. Jin, Saule Dyussenbina: Kazakh Funny Games and New Mythologies traces complex Central Asian geopolitics, history, traditions, and USSR memories through the works of Saule Dyussenbina. The former USSR-born Kazakh artist encapsulates the cultural diversity and multifaceted political history of Kazakhstan, and she produces new narratives and myths through unexpected juxtapositions and fragmented images.

From digital wallpaper to dinner plates, Dyussenbina sprinkles a sense of humor in her artworks while paying homage to European master artists such as Goya and Van Gogh, to indigenous nomadic Kazakhstan cultures, and to post-Soviet politics. She remixes motifs from traditional European ornaments, Kazakh folk culture (like ram horns, horses, and eagle hunters), architectural remains from the Soviet era, and icons of contemporary society (Chanel logos, surveillance cameras) and repeats them kaleidoscopically. Dazzling flies, flowers, horses, and cameras symbolize the collapse and rise of ubiquitous urban iconographies and repetitive failure in contemporary society.

Read more and hear the Audio Tour, click here.

Charles B. Wang Center Main Lobby

Again is a typographical mural by Brooklyn-based artist Seongmin Ahn, expressing her manifesto of overcoming the global COVID-19 pandemic. The mural is a cross-cultural exchange and community bonds, and it incorporates both Eastern and Western styles, motifs, ornaments, and symbols. The ornamented images celebrates "the beginning of a prosperous future again" in various languages, including Korean, English, Spanish, Chinese, and Hindi.

The mural has been installed in various communities in New York City, including the neighborhood of Corona, Queens, an area that was hit hard by COVID-19.

Charles B. Wang Center Theatre Gallery

White, flat, dreamlike spaces, serving as thresholds between the inner, subjective self and the external, physical world, were a subject that fascinated the South Korea-based project group GREEM (a name that literally translates to “picture” in Korean). GREEM’s goal is to elicit feelings of strangeness, difference, curiosity, and fun in its audiences. Following a long and rich Surrealist tradition, GREEM draws inspiration from dreamlike narratives, absurd juxtapositions, and comic books for new graphic languages.

A huge, flattened, and cartoon-like artist’s studio in white and black is open, inviting viewers to live out their surrealistic fantasies. The realistic detailing of the artist’s studio also adds touches of humor, utility, and everyday-ness. As soon as the viewer enters the studio (which is carefully modeled and gives the illusion of a three-dimensional form), surrealistic dreams are triggered; the white, flat scene and the viewer’s point of view are disrupted.

The current exhibition is designed to be reproduced and seen on social media as much as it is meant to be enjoyed in its actual location. This imaginative exhibition crosses perspective, culture, and media.

Curated by Jinyoung Jin, Director of Cultural Programs at the Charles B. Wang Center, this exhibition is designed and presented by Project Group GREEM, based in Seoul, South Korea.