Seonna Hong :: People In The City

October 8 - November 12, 2005
Reception: Saturday, October 8 from 6-9pm (Artist will be in attendance)

Sixspace is delighted to present People in the City, an exhibition of new oil-on-wood paintings by Seonna Hong. People in the City explores the duality of living in a metropolis where one simultaneously has a close connection with friends and family but also experiences the disconnected nature of being in an urban environment. As she has done with her past two bodies of work in the exhibitions Railroad and Animus, Hong’s new paintings relate to the personal struggle of growth, experience, and relationships. It also marks the artist’s third solo exhibition at sixspace.

Exemplifying the sense of connectedness in People in the City is Seonna Hong’s first series of representational portraits. Painted during live-sessions with sixteen people (including one self-portrait), the 8x10 inch portraits with visible brushstrokes and an earth-tone palette provide an intimate look at the expression of the sitter. And though who they are to the viewer is not important, they are simply friends and relatives to the artist, the relationship between the subject and the artist became crucial as the process afforded Hong the rare luxury of spending quality, uninterrupted time with those close to her.

Juxtaposed with the intimate rendering of the portraits are Hong’s cityscapes. By depicting diminutive characters in vast city environments, these paintings evoke the feeling of being small and disconnected. Particularly in Los Angeles, where the landscape is spread out, and in a world where technology has globalized the local, Hong says, “we spend a lot of time next to each other in cars packed on freeways in our own world... moving along in a parallel universe. Additionally, the Internet has brought this world so much closer, but a lot of these really wonderful amazing modern conveniences also seem to have reduced the amount of human contact we have in our daily lives.”

Seonna Hong (born 1973) received her BFA from California State University, Long Beach. She has held solo exhibitions in Los Angeles and New York as well as group exhibitions in Seattle, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. Hong has been featured in the New York Times, The New York Sun, Giant Robot (cover), Portland Mercury (cover), Res Magazine, Art Prostitute, as well as the catalogs for The Truth Show, Beatsville, and Sci-Fi Western. Hong’s first book Animus, a moving picture book based on the 2004 exhibition, will be released in October. For her animation work in 2004, she won an Emmy Award for background animation on "My Life as a Teenage Robot," the acclaimed Nickelodeon television program, and was nominated for an Annie Award. Seonna Hong currently lives and works in La Canada, California.

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*If you are interested in being placed on the preview/wait list for artwork by Seonna Hong, please contact the gallery.

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