ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE LUKE MACK & SO HEE KIM EXHIBITION PRESENTED BY PLAYGROUND DETROIT
PLAYGROUND DETROIT presents artists-in-residence, Detroit-based artist Luke Mack and visiting artist So Hee Kim with a weekend-long exhibition. The opening reception marks the conclusion of the six week Fall 2016 Artist Residency program on November 25th, from 6-9PM at Ponyride. On view together are two different bodies of work that are the result of time, space and a stipend from Blick Materials created through the residency.
Throughout their six week residency, Mack and Kim independently created new work, developed and led a community-focused workshop to share their process with the public, encouraging personal and creative development that reflect their experience of making artwork in Detroit. In their public workshop, they experimented to create a collaborative painting using the archival materials gathered by the participants. Attendees also helped to create important archival materials for So Hee Kim’s installation debuting Friday, to further explore creating a series of functional souvenir using physical debris, photos, and artifacts from her surrounding.
Found object installation, So Hee Kim
The use of collage as expression is shared in both So Hee Kim and Luke Mack’s work. While Kim chooses to works in 3-D, and Mack in 2-D, they both incorporate fun and playfulness in their art. During the residency, they each created experiential work that allows the audience to interact with or view familiar subject matter in a new, thought-provoking way. Luke Mack’s realism-based oil paintings are contrasted with formal elements such as line and color, while So Hee Kim takes real objects from her everyday life and re-imagined them into formal elements such as lines and shapes, contrasted with their original intended purpose.
According to Kim, her work is “inspired by an excess of contemporary culture, [referenced in her books, photographs, videos, and installation] whose artifacts overflow into [her] daily life. “These artifacts are often mundane everyday objects—once familiar, now obscure, absent of history or contemporary relevance.”
Her work that blurs distinctions between two-dimensional surfaces and interactive installations, emphasizing transitional access points that de-materialize familiar passages. The installation and artwork she has created for this exhibition utilizes found objects and materials from her Detroit stay, in addition to collaboratively made items from the artist workshop hosted at Ponyride. Since receiving her BFA in Painting at Rhode Island School of Design in 2015 So Hee Kim has become what she dubs as a “residency-hopper.” She has completed nine different residencies across the United States, Canada, and Germany, exhibiting in each city, as well as in Seoul, Korea since 2014. The experiences have led to the accumulation of interesting stories and dialogues, attributing to her site-specific installations that she has developed in Detroit.
Visiting artist So Hee Kim exploring Dabl’s African Bead Museum.
Her work embodies the notion that “visual traces from paintings, books, installations, and video are fragments of shifting time: surfaces as slices of memory that build on top of another. It blurs distinctions between two-dimensional surfaces and interactive installations, emphasizing transitional access points that dematerialize familiar passages. An improvisational approach lets the following work to be deconstructed and reassembled in other ways.” She further explains, “I seek to present the constant changeability of my work that can be moved around and played with.”
Luke Mack strives to create strong conceptual ideas and stories, disguised as beautiful images with bold compositions. He works primarily with oils and believes that fine details are just as important as loose brush strokes. The series of oil paintings that he has created during his residency emphasize beauty in images injected with positive energy. The tension created by the striking figurative female forms in contrast with bold, playful shapes forces the viewer to alternate between realism and the two-dimensional quality of paint on canvas.
Detail of “Interlude,” by Luke Mack.
His series challenges the viewer “to consider intent over process” and to “experience familiar images removed of toxic undertones from the media.” Similar to So Hee Kim, both artists evoke visceral emotions as an experience that allows for relaxation, inspiration and positive reflection.
Mack explains, “My process always begins with finding and then photographing a subject.” In this series, a diverse group of female portraits are explored. “I digitally manipulate and sketch over the photos designing compositions through multiple iterations, creating the big picture layout that I use as reference while painting. The manipulations consist of cropping and overlaying faces on top of each other and altering skin color… to awaken the viewer from [media] numbness and remove cultural influence to see the female face in an organic way.”
Luke Mack working in his Ponyride studio. Photography credit, Shannon Mack.
SPECIAL THANK YOU TO OUR PARTNERS
JOIN US Friday, November 25th from 6-9P for the opening reception of their exhibition in celebration of their residency program.
The exhibition hours will continue on Saturday, November 26th from 1-5PM.
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