SOON AFTER
Yoonmi Nam
9.01.23-09.22.23
Opening Reception | Friday, September 1
Yoonmi Nam’s solo exhibition Soon After presents a meditative exploration into the process of transformation and the passage of time. Spanning both the wall and floor, the multimedia exhibition includes a series of sculptural Sumi ink paintings in conversation with an installation of black, ceremonial tea bowls arranged on benches. With exquisite attention to material and repetition of form, the two works celebrate both the discarded and ephemeral.
Nam’s process involves observing, collecting and reproducing mundane objects around her. For “Delivered & Discarded,” she pulls from a reservoir of flattened delivery boxes consumed during the pandemic and everyday life. By deconstructing, flattening and layering the form, she abstracts the everyday cardboard box. They now read as shape— until you notice a familiar tab or handle. The surfaces are equally mysterious and evocative. The mixture of Sumi ink and alcohol on lightweight Tyvek recalls weathered sheets of metal. Stacked into piles that gently cascade from the wall, there is a sense of permanence and impermanence that is both ominous and elegant.
Influenced by the involved process of making traditional Sumi ink and the ancestral worship of the tea ceremony, Nam’s installation “Soon After” evokes a sense of reverence and ritual. To make Sumi ink, oil is burned and the soot collected in ceramic bowls suspended above the flame. The soot is then mixed with gelatin, molded, and dried for many years. In Nam’s installation, rows of ink-stained ceramic bowls sit on charred wooden benches. Within the bowls, Sumi ink has been left to pool, dry, and transform once again. Reflected in the crazed surface, time feels tangible and intangible.
Together, Nam’s ink paintings and ceramic installation prompt a dialogue about the accumulation of time, the weight of existence, and the cycles of consumption.
Curated by Kristen Martincic
Yoonmi Nam is an artist born in Seoul, South Korea, and has studied in Korea, Canada, US, and Japan. Yoonmi is interested in the observation and depiction of everyday objects and occurrences, especially when they subtly suggest contradictions - a perception of time that feels both temporary and lasting and a sense of place that feels both familiar and foreign. Growing up as an only child with working parents, she often engaged in quiet observations of things around her. Experiences of living in disparate cultures with different people and their histories allowed her to notice what often is unobserved in one’s own familiar spaces. She works in traditional printmaking processes such as mokuhanga (Japanese-style water-based woodblock printing) and lithography to make imagery as well as explore other materials such as clay, glass, and paper to make three-dimensional still lifes.
Yoonmi received her MFA degree from the Rhode Island School of Design and BFA degree from Hong-Ik University in Seoul, Korea. She was awarded residencies at Mokuhanga Innovation Laboratory in Japan three times (2004, 2012, 2019) to study traditional Japanese woodblock printing techniques and is the recipient of the Keiko Kadota Award for Advancement of Mokuhanga. She has participated in artist residencies at Brandywine Workshop and Archives in Philadelphia, Frans Masereel Centrum in Belgium, Kala Art Institute in California, Vermont Studio Center, and a 3-year studio residency at Studios Inc. in Kansas City. Her work is in the collections of the RISD Museum, RI; Spencer Museum of Art, KS; and the Hawai’i State Art Museum, HI; among others, and has shown her work in over 20 solo exhibitions and 180 group exhibitions both nationally and internationally. Yoonmi is a professor of printmaking at theUniversity of Kansas.