By MONICA STARK
editor@valcomnews.ocm
The story of husband and wife team Ian Harvey and Koo Kyung Sook is rich and deep, as they investigate their own individual works as artists and as they work on monumental collaborative pieces, which are now on display at JAYJAY art gallery on Elvas Avenue.
Together + Alone is a continuation of an exhibit with the same title mounted at JAYJAY in 2010.
Using the figurative imagery of Sook, and the alchemic abstract painting approach of Sacramento State painting professor Harvey, the two artists make thousands of paintings on business card stock (2”x 3.5”), and build works on a grid to form large-scale figurative paintings (112”x132”) for their collaborative pieces.
If it sounds labor intensive, it is.
The process begins with Sook in a dark room, where she exposes photo paper to light and drops Sumi ink on top, which creates a look of abstract lines and squiggles. She does this hundreds (sometimes thousands) of times and chooses which ones to piece together to form a face or body.
Once an image is complete, they project the image and use it as a guide, for a totally different work, creating an interpretation of the black and white image. Then they piece thousands of business cards that they have painted to large, colorful displays.
For some of the projects, a lot of color is portrayed, sometimes by mistake as chemical reactions with alcohol, polyurethane and powders occur. When done, each 3×5 card resembles individual blood cells. “We want to think of the body as a corporate entity of cells. The body is made up of all these individual cells.” When you get them together, something magical happens – art pieces showing the body in its most whimsical form.
“Sometimes people think it’s like a puzzle — that it’s ready made — but it’s not,” Sook said. “If we chose 800 (painted cards), that means we made at least 2,000,” she said.
The two first met in Vermont in 2002 at the Vermont Studio Center Press, where Harvey worked as a fundraiser and Koo was selected as a Freeman Fellow, which included 10 Asian artists over the course of a year to work on projects for two months each. “So Koo came and I ignored her while she was there and then after the two months passed, I came (over to her) … Yeah, I am pretty slow,” he said.
After that Sook was living in South Korea, working as a professor at the University of Korea. So they two went back and forth from the states to Korea. “When we were together we would do the collaborative work over school vacations … and in between we would work on our own work,” Harvey said.
Since they have been living together, they have been focusing on their collaborative work. “We had a (collaborative) show in Seoul last September. So we were in good shape for that,” Harvey said. But he hadn’t done any substantive individual work in over almost a year and a half. But he said JAYJAY wanted to do another show. “We said, ‘yeah, of course’ because we like working with JAYJAY.’ They’re great. But then we sort of had to hustle,” Harvey said.
Harvey said over his career, he’s pretty much just stuck to abstract painting, while Soak has worked with many media. Over time, their relationship as married artists evolved.
“Our relationship with materials is the common ground,” Harvey said. “She’s using this photographic material to invent an image; I’m using paint to invent an image. It’s basically the same thing. She’s making figures; I’m making imaginary landscapes or whatever you want to call them,” Harvey said.
He said he has always admired Koo’s images. “I am an abstract painter. I don’t make images of the figure perspective. I did try at one point, but they always came out like illustrations. They were really corny, really bad,” he laughed.
So he became an abstract painter, using Sook’s images as a kind of model for the image they are going to make.
In practice, they share the same interests.
Harvey, a former New York based artist with his MFA from Columbia University School of the Arts, was introduced to the Sacramento region in a West Coast premier solo exhibit at JAYJAY in 2007. He received rave reviews for his “maximalist” approach to compositions with various paint mediums. Harvey, a painting professor at CSU Sacramento, has continued to impress collectors with his obvious love of paint and its ability to move on a surface, forming complicated abstract narratives.
Koo Kyung Sook was a professor of fine arts at Chung Nam National University in Taejon, Korea for the last couple of decades, and is recently retired and has immigrated to the US. She received her first BFA from Hongik University in Seoul, Korea, following with a BFA from the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. She has exhibited widely in Korea and the United States, focusing on her interest in the figure with gestural images on paper, most recently in a digital medium.
The story of husband and wife team Ian Harvey and Koo Kyung Sook is rich and deep, as they investigate their own individual works as artists and as they work on monumental collaborative pieces, which are now on display at JAYJAY art gallery on Elvas Avenue.
Together + Alone is a continuation of an exhibit with the same title mounted at JAYJAY in 2010.
Using the figurative imagery of Sook, and the alchemic abstract painting approach of Sacramento State painting professor Harvey, the two artists make thousands of paintings on business card stock (2”x 3.5”), and build works on a grid to form large-scale figurative paintings (112”x132”) for their collaborative pieces.
If it sounds labor intensive, it is.
The process begins with Sook in a dark room, where she exposes photo paper to light and drops Sumi ink on top, which creates a look of abstract lines and squiggles. She does this hundreds (sometimes thousands) of times and chooses which ones to piece together to form a face or body.
Once an image is complete, they project the image and use it as a guide, for a totally different work, creating an interpretation of the black and white image. Then they piece thousands of business cards that they have painted to large, colorful displays.
For some of the projects, a lot of color is portrayed, sometimes by mistake as chemical reactions with alcohol, polyurethane and powders occur. When done, each 3×5 card resembles individual blood cells. “We want to think of the body as a corporate entity of cells. The body is made up of all these individual cells.” When you get them together, something magical happens – art pieces showing the body in its most whimsical form.
“Sometimes people think it’s like a puzzle — that it’s ready made — but it’s not,” Sook said. “If we chose 800 (painted cards), that means we made at least 2,000,” she said.
The two first met in Vermont in 2002 at the Vermont Studio Center Press, where Harvey worked as a fundraiser and Koo was selected as a Freeman Fellow, which included 10 Asian artists over the course of a year to work on projects for two months each. “So Koo came and I ignored her while she was there and then after the two months passed, I came (over to her) … Yeah, I am pretty slow,” he said.
After that Sook was living in South Korea, working as a professor at the University of Korea. So they two went back and forth from the states to Korea. “When we were together we would do the collaborative work over school vacations … and in between we would work on our own work,” Harvey said.
Since they have been living together, they have been focusing on their collaborative work. “We had a (collaborative) show in Seoul last September. So we were in good shape for that,” Harvey said. But he hadn’t done any substantive individual work in over almost a year and a half. But he said JAYJAY wanted to do another show. “We said, ‘yeah, of course’ because we like working with JAYJAY.’ They’re great. But then we sort of had to hustle,” Harvey said.
Harvey said over his career, he’s pretty much just stuck to abstract painting, while Soak has worked with many media. Over time, their relationship as married artists evolved.
“Our relationship with materials is the common ground,” Harvey said. “She’s using this photographic material to invent an image; I’m using paint to invent an image. It’s basically the same thing. She’s making figures; I’m making imaginary landscapes or whatever you want to call them,” Harvey said.
He said he has always admired Koo’s images. “I am an abstract painter. I don’t make images of the figure perspective. I did try at one point, but they always came out like illustrations. They were really corny, really bad,” he laughed.
So he became an abstract painter, using Sook’s images as a kind of model for the image they are going to make.
In practice, they share the same interests.
Harvey, a former New York based artist with his MFA from Columbia University School of the Arts, was introduced to the Sacramento region in a West Coast premier solo exhibit at JAYJAY in 2007. He received rave reviews for his “maximalist” approach to compositions with various paint mediums. Harvey, a painting professor at CSU Sacramento, has continued to impress collectors with his obvious love of paint and its ability to move on a surface, forming complicated abstract narratives.
Koo Kyung Sook was a professor of fine arts at Chung Nam National University in Taejon, Korea for the last couple of decades, and is recently retired and has immigrated to the US. She received her first BFA from Hongik University in Seoul, Korea, following with a BFA from the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. She has exhibited widely in Korea and the United States, focusing on her interest in the figure with gestural images on paper, most recently in a digital medium.
If you go:
What: ‘Ian Harvey + Koo Kyung Sook: Together + Alone’ exhibit
Where: JAYJAY, 5520 Elvas Ave., Sacramento, 95819
When: Now-June 22, with an artists’ reception on May 2, from 5:30 to 8 p.m., including a gallery talk at 7 p.m. A Second Saturday reception will be held May 11 from 6 to 8 p.m.
Contact: 453-2999
editor@valcomnews.com
Originally from Illinois, Miles studied at Northern Illinois University for undergrad then continued on to Western Oregon University, which was then called Western Oregon State College. “When I was in Oregon I thought I was going to stay in Oregon but I heard about an opening down here and interviewed. I ended up being really impressed with what I saw and came here instead,” he said.
