**Work
Open States - Earthquake, drawing work in progress from mirena rhee on Vimeo.
Rough cut of the making of my latest painting dealing with the disaster in Japan: Open States – Earthquake, 30 x 40 inches, pen and ink on paper. The painting is the first in a series prompted by my dream about an earthquake, a dream I had about 48 hours before the earthquake in Japan struck.
Unfinished business - a fragment of my latest yet-to-be-finished painting dealing with the disaster in Japan: Open States - Earthquake, 30 x 40 inches, pen and ink on paper. It will be days before the painting is completed, it is still quite raw. And it will change by the time it is finished. But just like its subject matter - I was anxious to preserve this current crumbling state. The painting is the first in a series prompted by my dream about the Japan earthquake, which I had about 48 hours before it struck.
May is a month of growth in the art business and a number of great artists have shows all over Chelsea. Richard Tuttle's vigorous presence at Pace Gallery with pretty large follies that oozed spirit. Jasper Johns who was in attendance of his show opening at Matthew Marks Gallery in Chelsea and seemed to very much enjoy himself amidst his many works and the crowds, who seemed to enjoy it too.
Today also marks my one year anniversary of living and painting in New York. I don't have much to say but have a lot to paint about it.
Starting a new work is a leap of faith. After the initial decoupling with solid ground, all traditional notions cease to exist. You are in a state somewhere between free fall and zero gravity except the center of the pull is unknown. New work is a trip into the subconscious masquerading as a constructive act. At certain moment you feel like the clock from a Dali painting sliding down a glass surface. Somewhere along the way is a mirror which you eventually smoothly slip through and it marks the boundary of the world of the painting. Until then you travel with an intent to make the painting, beyond the mirror you and the painting travel together. Once through the mirror the old universe no longer exists.
The making of Exquisite Corpse One:
The resulting Exquisite Corpse I work - 4x7 feet, mixed media on paper mounted on board, 2010.
Artists: Anna Efanova, Dilcia Giron, Vera Costa, Mirena Rhee.:
To my patrons and all art lovers visiting Open Studios - Thank you for the inspiration and provocation. The planing of future work will be in part based on feedback I received from you. This is going to be in a way a continuation of our conversation. Thank you for your patronage.
I would like to invite you to Pen and Ink Drawings Open studio as part of High Line Open Studios Chelsea 2010 - Oct 15-17, 526 West 26th street, suite 303, Fri 6-9 pm, Sat and Sun 12-6 pm. I will be participating with new pen and ink drawings.
Link to the online invite is here: http://mirenarhee.com/mirena_rhee_invite.jpg
There is going to be an accompanying Exhibition Opening Party for All High Line artists, which will be held at 508 West 26th street, suite 5G, Thurs, Oct 14, 2010 from 6 to 9 p.m. The exhibit will remain open Oct 15-17, 2010, Fri, Sat and Sun from 12 to 6 p.m.
Facebook page for this event: http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=124283857625985
I would be happy to see you if you can make any of the days/events. Please, feel free to forward around. There are many other artists participating in the event, all within a few blocks around West 26th street in Chelsea. If you can't make my studio perhaps you can visit theirs: http://www.highlineopenstudios.org/artists.html
Thank you for your support!
I spent some time at the Brooklyn museum with Kiki Smith's drawings, ink and glitter on cream colored paper, and with large Egyptian reliefs and works in stone done millennia before the word art was invented. What is it in art that moves so ? What is in a Picasso print, what transpires in a B.C. marble, what is in a Vatican fresco and a Dying Slave? What's the Black in a black Goya painting, what's eating us in a Bosch, where is the De Kooning woman going on her bicycle, which anonymous artist painted the thousand hands of this Shiva? Why does Monet shimmer, why is that man with an apple for a face, how many birds do you see in an Escher, why is the triangle of light in Rembrandt so mysterious? Where is the light in a Vermeer coming from, why are there 500 species of flowers in a Botticelli, why am I going around in circles trying to find out where the wind is coming from that is blowing these cypresses, and why is mouth and flesh in a Bacon so maddeningly beautiful? Why is art so beautiful?
A poem written by Mirena Rhee during the wash cycle at the corner laundromat.
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
Exquisite Corpse II exhibit Opening reception is next Saturday, April 17th 6:30 - 10:00 PM @ Market Street Gallery: 1554 Market St, Between Van Ness Ave and Franklin in San Francisco. Artslant published the info & invite. This will be the culmination of Absurdas group collaborative effort - for more on our process see our facebook page.
Good Morning and Happy Spring ! I'd like to invite you to SOMA SPRING OPEN STUDIOS: APRIL 17-18, 12 noon to 6 pm. I will be showing ink drawings on paper at site301: 301 8th Street @ Folsom, #245.
Thanks to Kathy Arnold who kindly invited me to share her studio. I will be thrilled if you can make it! For more info. please, visit http://www.somaopenstudios.org/
The tree of Life grew out of a tiny seed drawing, about 2x2 inches. I wanted to refine a process where I would plant a seed little drawing and allow it to grow into a full piece. The top image is the very first stage of the Tree of Life, the equivalent of a lump of clay. This moment is one of the scariest in art. It's like you are standing at the edge of a cliff and wish you could close your eyes and fly away. It turns out you need to climb up instead. Actually being at that very moment is never scary for me, I enter the tunnel space of my vision and the world around me becomes absolutely perfect. I generally do have a partial tunnel vision where things don't quite register and i could, without a penalty, focus on only one thing at a time. And no, there are no drugs involved ;) i could never drink or eat when I draw, they are incompatible activities.
More about the Exquisite Corpse history and origins:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exquisite_corpse
More about our collaborative process: http://absurdasart.blogspot.com/
Black and sepia Ink Drawing on Hot Pressed Board, 30x40 inches. The Corpse gave me a chance to collaborate with a group of awesome artists and also address the subject of the body. I have dealt with the body a lot as a photographer and this was a very different experience. To me the question of what happens to the body and what is the body is as important as what is outside of it, part of the reason i dislike ruffled backgrounds is because the substance of what is around the thing is as important and material as the thing. I am also very interested in the contact - how is the body situated in what surrounds it, since it's essentially the same matter, it's just a trick that it's invisible to the naked eye.Location: Part of a Absurdas Exquisite Corpse collaboration
