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‘Everything is possible’ for 4 London artists

Four international artists have got together for a London Hanmi Gallery exhibition, When Nothing is Sure, Everything is possible, 9-19 January 2014, writes SAJID RIZVI.

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Youngju Oh 2012, The Melting Point

Hanmi Gallery founder Heashin Kwak has been holding interim exhibitions, awaiting the gallery premises’ final refurbishment. This is her 29th interim exhibition and features yet another array of new artists waiting to be discovered for larger audiences.

Two of the artists, Jingjing Shen and Shadow (Xiaoxue) Tian, are also responsible for co-curating the show which draws on a phrase, ‘When Nothing Is Sure, Everything Is Possible,’ made famous as being ascribed to Margaret Drabble in The Middle Ground. Is Drabble onto some profound truth or stating the obvious? That, as it happens, calls for another discussion, but not here.

Drabble is also famous for telling off people who write to her to explain what her books are about — a question often asked of artists literary or visual almost anywhere.

Youngju Oh and Yinan Zhang are the other two artists in the exhibition. So that makes three artists who are Chinese and one (Oh) who is from South Korea. And they are all women and all currently at the Royal College of Art.  Youngju Oh’s RCA experience was preceded by a degree in communication design at Hongik University, a private university with two campuses in Seoul and Sejong that played a part in Korea’s struggle for independence from Japan. She’s now on to visual communication at the RCA.

Jingjing Shen studied earlier at Glasgow School of Art and Yinan Zhang (aka Zhang Yinan) made prints at Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts before moving to London for the RCA course.

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Yinan Zhang 2013, The Body of a Philosopher of Life

A curatorial / gallery statement explains the artists chose Drabble’s quotation to sum up what they have brought together in the exhibition. For a young artist starting the perilous journey of an artistic career, that phrase somehow captures the anxiety and uncertainty of that early moment of creative venturing. Thankfully it is also a moment of freedom, of letting loose when ‘everything is possible.’

Hanmi Gallery may still need a bit of paint and plaster on its walls, but it continues doggedly to show an exciting — and instructive — range of new art.

Hanmi Gallery, 30 Maple Street, London W1T 6HA. T +44-[0]-7862 283 414.

 

 

Author: Editor

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