Work

Thank you for your support during Open Studios /  by mirena

Picasso once said "It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child". I'd say it will take a few lifetimes to earn the ability to see like a child. As a child you always see things as they are, rarely blinded by purpose or meaning.  Once you grow up you stop being fascinated by the obvious thingness of all things, the simple facts of movement and color which are astonishing by themselves but too obvious.

Life existed for 3.5 million years without the ability to see. So the thinking among
scientists is that life didn't need the ability to see in order to exist. Seeing is the
longing of life to understand and to reflect on itself.

Life existed for 3.5 million years without the ability to see. So the thinking among  scientists is that life didn't need the ability to see in order to exist. I am hoping it will take me a bit less than that to learn how to see.

Careful! Some bugs still in this one. /  by mirena

Pace Gallery in Chelsea mounted an amazing Social Media show but their Iphone App Fakes literally took my breath away... laughing. "The exhibition  features the first presentation of works from the David Byrne’s new Apps series from 2011. The works are advertisements for witty applications authored by Byrne that speak to the rapid proliferation of apps for the iPhone and other smart phones.."

Profound Richard Tuttle /  by mirena

"I have had two or three non-art thoughts in my life..."
"Art sustains polarities that cannot be sustained in the (real)world."
"Art accommodates the mystic."
"Art provides the viewer with the experience of reality. Art performs a "blimp". A line becomes a primary thing... Presents itself."
"A miracle belongs to the viewer."
"When you make art you access the back part of the brain(the animalistic part of the brain), and the animalistic gives us relief."
"The relationship between art and the viewer is a relationship more profound than marriage, than parent/child relationship. There is no pain, destruction and a reason for fear."
"Trust your work."

a digression. /  by mirena

Hand Painted ocean and fruit - animated collage of pen and ink drawings.

Hand Painted Ocean and Fruit from mirena rhee on Vimeo.

Intent sometimes takes years to grow - you have a vision in your head but it may take years for it to become optically evident. In the commercial world intent is focused on a product but in art, luckily, intent grows together with the artist realizing that intent. There is a flow to this process, an easy state.

This is a piece about a queue of vague thoughts, gestures, earlier work and some paintings at the Rubin museum of art in New York. It is also about conversations and acts of confession from other artists. Whenever I draw or work on my computer I mostly watch hands theater, it is an endless act of creation and an act of war.

It is also about how living in Manhattan change me, it is about turning inward and imploding my personal space. It turned my attention to my intimate space, science defines it as 1.5 meters in diameter. A realization that a simple act of peeling apples actually is an extraordinary act on micro-level, where electric storms of electrons introduce ordinary changes in reality. This "hands theater" is in essence a violent act, not in the way of doing harm but an epic battle to make change, to rupture. Hand painted ocean and fruit ( Manhattan series ) - 40 x 10 inches, pen and ink on hot pressed board, 2010

Music by Al Dimeola, John Mclaughlin & Paco Delucia - Azzura.

https://www.mirenarhee.art/hand-painted-ocean-and-fruit-mirena-rhee.mp4