Tuywet Bach, Charlie Cho, Mari Eastman, Jacob Hashimoto, Tamaki Honda, Jeff Huntington, Jeff Kitagawa, Deanna Lee, Yung Moon, Diane Masuda, Todd Parola, Ronald Stroud, Dean Yamada, and One Danny Yoon.
Featured Artists
Curated by Ray Yoshida, this exhibition displayed work by young artists of Asian ancestry whose art combined a range of formal and conceptual strategies with the artistic mediums of drawing, painting, sculpture, installation and video, in order to challenge the traditional art cannon. Danny Yoon‘s work focused on identity as it related to technological processes. Interested in the rising phenomena of digital imaging the artist addressed the ways the human existence is translated into various information streams by presenting a combination of video and photographic work. Coming from a an analysis of language as a process of pairing sound with meaning Ronald Stroud‘s paintings questioned assumption about cultural identity by paired stereotypical images of different cultures with unusual words. Influenced by semiotic theory and Zen meditation practices Todd Parola‘s abstract work explored the issue of iconographical intent in the field of post-minimal abstraction. Painted on twin oval panel and presented in pairs his encaustic abstractions explored form and spatial perception. In her paintings Denna Lee played with the traditional concepts of perception. Her work incorporated flatness of color with recurring patterns in order to imply feelings like ambivalence, awkwardness and consumption. Jeff Huntington‘s work used painting as a means of cathartic and gestural expression. Concerned with notions of fragility, labor, contemplation and precision, Jacob Hashimoto‘s sculptures used the form and function of a kite as a basis to explore the formal and conceptual nature of multiples. His work talked about the nature of childhood memories and the feeling of nostalgia. Catherine Mari Eastman paintings captured the immediacy of videos, magazines, and films as it related to impermanence, identity, desire, and fashion. Tuyet Bach work examined what is stereotypically equated with the ‘Oriental’- that is, what mythological and aesthetic boundaries describe how ‘Asian’ becomes ‘Oriental’. The paintings in the show were based on the visual trappings of the ‘Oriental’ as interpreted by the West during the Chinoiserie craze of the early 18th century.
