Asian Society of Arts

Jaena Kwon, Alejandro Yoshii, Erica Hu, BMT Kou, Dichen Ding, Hiromitsu Kuroo, Mari Maeda, Katya Grokhovsky

November 12-24, 2015
Closing Reception: Monday, November 23, 6-9 PM

Jaena Kwon is an abstract painter originally from Seoul, South Korea, currently living and working in Long Island City, New York. Based in the United States since 2012, her work ranges in scale from painting to installation and examines the physical and perceptual properties such as color, light, depth, and pictoriality of abstract paintings. Kwon's experience of moving abroad and re-positioning in complicated social relations influenced her decision to create fluid shapes and developed her interest in an object within its environment. Kwon's artwork has been exhibited at SongEun ArtSpace, SongEun ArtCube, and ING Bank in Seoul, The Chait Gallery in Iowa City, The 808 Gallery in Boston, and The Giam Pietro Gallery in New Haven..

Alejandro Yoshii is a multidisciplinary artist working with sculpture, painting, and performance art. His work has been exhibited throughout Mexico and the United States. In 2011, his work was selected for two biennials in Mexico - the 5th National Biennial of Visual Arts Yucatan and the 13th Northwest Biennial of Visual Arts. After moving to New York in 2012, Yoshii's work was exhibited at the Governors Island Art Fair 2013 and 2014, The Kitchen, The National Opera Center, and Emoa Space gallery. He has been an artist in residence at the Vermont Studio Center, Chashama studio program, and NYFA's immigrant artist mentoring program. He was awarded the graduate Dean's scholarship and the university merit scholarship at Parsons the New School for Design. In his work, he explores the notions of cultural dislocation, displacement, and the visual and conceptual juxtapositions that arise from attempts to represent the body in contemporary culture..

Erica Hu is a motion graphics artist and designer who was born in China. She received her BFA degree in Communication from the University of China in 2008 and her MFA in Computer Art with a concentration in motion graphics from the School of Visual Arts in New York City in 2011. Hu's design and motion graphic works use both 2D and 3D illustrations and spatial constructions to create magical worlds that burst with color and movement. Her work has been exhibited at major international exhibitions include SIGGRAPH Asia 2011 Computer Animation Festival (Hong Kong, China), Onedotzero Adventures in Motion International Festival (London, United Kingdom), 12th View Conference (Turin, Italy), Screen Social (London, United Kingdom), Very Short International Film Festival(Paris, France).

Kou Ogasawara started BLIND MAN TOGS as the jewelry brand on March 2009. His jewelries are made from a base of antique silver cutleries. Every product is sold at high level stores in USA, JAPAN.

Dichen Ding is Chinese architectural designer who currently resides in New York. She graduated from Tsinghua University with a Bachelor in Economics and Finance and later received her master's degree in Architecture from Columbia University. Dichen is a full-time architectural designer, pottery lover, good-food fan, part-time florist and furniture maker. She is currently working on multiple projects in TEN Arquitectos New York office, with an emphasis on institutional, cultural, mixed-use and residential categories.

Mari Maeda-Oboshi was born and raised in Tokyo, Japan. Mari and Yuji Oboshi started a Photography duo "(yu+ma)" in New York City in 2010. They are specialized in Beauty, Fashion and Still-life. In recent years, their work have been published in numerous international publications. www.yumanyc.com Besides working as a part of photography duo, Mari finds time to do her personal project. Her Ikebana Series One consists of 4 botanical imagery which are not vibrant, pleasant, or cheerful. They look like flowers are growing from dark.

Hiromitsu Kuroo's bold relief constructions may at once be interpreted as either reinvestigations of western abstraction's possibilities or, alternatively, a bold new development in Japanese origami. Eschewing the latter's tradition of mimesis – representations of cranes, dragons, or butterflies, for example – the artist relishes in the formal autonomy of fold-making, with patterned pleats, overlaps, and inversions. Canvas, instead of paper, is the primary medium. Individual geometric shapes formed by the final folds are painted with saturated acrylics, typically in ways that divide the textured surface into the push and pull elements of figure and ground.
Kuroo earned his BFA and MFA from Tohoku University of Art & Design, and has had solo exhibitions at the Tenri Cultural Institute, Gloria Kennedy Gallery, Ouchi Gallery, and Bronx Community College, all in New York, and Gallery Yamaguchi Gallery and G-Art Gallery, both in Tokyo. In 2010 he received a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant.

Katya Grokhovsky's interdisciplinary practice, which combines painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, installation, performance, photography, and video, explores issues of gender, culture, and the self, often employing the body as a tool to weave together the personal and political. Dealing with issues of alienation, displacement and identity, Grokhovsky cuts and juxtaposes, metaphorically and physically, various found materials, exposing the absurd in the societal constructs. Scrutinizing the idea of femininity in the everyday, as the uncanny concept, she researches the histories of beauty and aesthetics, whilst staging the body of a female body, in relation to the social order. Katya Grokhovsky is a Ukrainian born, Australian raised artist, who works and lives in New York. She holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a BFA from Victorian College of the Arts, Australia and a BA (Honors) in Fashion from Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia.