Voloshyn Gallery participates in EXPO CHICAGO 2024 with a project by two artists — Maria Sulymenko and Cathy Hsiao.
The project begins with watercolours by Maria Sulymenko, which fascinate the viewers with their existentialist approach, conveyed through abstract concepts and absurd atmosphere. Sulymenko depicts the fragility of existence and the inevitability of darkness, portraying the typical loneliness, traumatic fears and anxieties that lead to absurd and imaginary situations.
Behind the laconic simplicity of Sulymenko’s works lies a mysterious and enigmatic space. Primarily internal, but also sometimes external, these spaces are narrow and enclosed. The quiet atmosphere of translucent grey does not allow the eye to discern the horizon line — it seems almost absent. The landscapes in Sulymenko's works are almost uninhabited. If nameless figures do appear, they are mostly single, occasionally in pairs or threes. Interactions between people are rare. Despite the potential search for connection, the characters in Sulymenko's works do not belong to themselves, nor do they look directly at the viewer, their gazes are turned away.
It seems that time has stopped but a moment is captured and it extends further. A moment that turns into a state; not becoming, but rather just being. Stuck between “already” and “not yet,” they are waiting for something to appear, to happen, perhaps to change. The surreal world that Sulymenko creates is a liminal space frozen between reality and imagination, nostalgia and grief, comfort and anxiety. Like a state of insomnia, her world exists in an eternal “between.” Do we eventually wake up from this nightmare, or do we fall asleep to rest from this madness?
Cathy Hsiao enters into a dialogue with Maria's work, considering and exploring the dynamic intersections of art with socio-political responses, technological materiality, intertwining this with historical reflections in bas-reliefs exploring iconographies of power and the infinite reproducibility of the digital image and the object as multiple. In the “Titanium Series,” Hsiao recycles studio remnants via titanium vapor, a nod to the mineralogical resources required to sustain our digital lives. Her new body of work was created in residence at the Kohler Co. factory in 2024 specifically for EXPO CHICAGO.
“‘The Cloud’ hovers over the most recent body of Cathy Hsiao’s work in its vaporous state. The Cloud is a connective tissue with an aesthetic form, storing and transmitting information, images, and power between disparate infrastructures, but it is also itself a structure that requires material resources and labor to be sustained. The Cloud permeates the ever-dissolving boundary between our digital and material lives.
In “Peonies detail, Guiseppe Castiglione” (2024), “Dragon, Supreme Hall of Harmony” (2024), and “The Cloud” (2024), Hsiao uses open source images from the digital archives of the National Palace Museum in Taipei, Taiwan and Photoleap’s MidJourney AI to 3-D render and then machine and hand sculpt with vitreous China, reproducing symbols of cultural power including historical artworks, that have been mediated through the Cloud and by the artist’s hands.
The sculptures of organic landscape forms of the “Titanium”; series (2024) are byproducts of the industrial processes that Hsiao has learned and implemented in the Arts/Industry residency. Many elements are required for a successful outcome with slip casting: molds are constructed, slip must then be poured beyond the capacity of the mold, and the maker’s strength and energy are required. These are all components of industrial and artistic processes that are often invisible in a finished product or artwork. Just as the iPhone’s materiality and industrial processes are left unknown to the majority of consumers, these byproducts are also left unknown. Hsiao makes these byproducts visible as artworks and transforms them with an industrial material process known as PVD (Physical Vapor Deposition). Vaporous metals are distributed across the form’s surface, immersing the casting in a cloud of resources to the point of metallic downpour and total submersion, “ - text by Chava Krivchenia, assistant curator, John Michael Kohler Arts Center.
Booth 227
EXPO CHICAGO 2024
April 11 – 14, 2024
Festival Hall 600 E Grand Ave, Chicago, IL 60611, US
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