CONTEMPLATIVE REALMS:

Primeval Geographies

Sea of SAMSARA

The Secrets of the Wind

April 1 – 30, 2011

Opening Reception: Friday, April 1, 5-9 pm

Mid-term Reception: Friday, April 15, 5-9 pm (PIFA Gallery Night)

DALET GALLERY will present” Contemplative Realms,” a project combining three solo exhibitions of the artists expressing their own experience of contemplation and meditation as a most important part of their creative process. 

Artist: IRENA KONONOVA

Exhibition Title: Primeval Geographies

These pictorial excavations intend to peel layers of superimposed earth histories as well as layers of our mind and soul. The geological layers of soil that are often depicted in the paintings correspond to multiple layers of paint. Fluid element is omnipresent, as it would be in aquatic primordial nature, but it also hints at the fluidity of our imagination and thinking process. The vast landscapes are devoid of figures although the human presence is made manifest by subtle signs.

The paintings are filled with biomorphic shapes that blur the boundaries between organic flesh and crystalline mass, merging life with dead matter, making viewers guess if what is depicted is a mountain or an animal.

It is fitting that sand – a product of long interaction between stones and water – is one of the physical components of these works.

Mapping out utopian lands, these paintings achieve more than anything else a prescient role as maps of our unconscious.

Irena Kononova is a graduate of Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts where she was a recipient of the Cresson Traveling Scholarship and various prizes. During her years in Philadelphia, Irena had won a juried show at the Fleisher Art Memorial and was interviewed many times for major newspapers. She was featured in a dialog on Art in Exile on Fresh Air program on the National Public Radio. 

In California Ms. Kononova held solo exhibitions in Peninsula Art Museum and Maturango Museum as well as in number of art galleries. The has exhibited her work in the United States and abroad, notably at Berman E.N. in New York City, Zona Gallery in Amsterdam, American Artists Gallery in Santa Fe, San Diego Museum of Art, Coutts Art Museum, Domont Studio Gallery in Indianapolis, Anne Bradford Gallery in Healdsburg, and University of Minnesota.

Artist: SKY KIM

Exhibition Title: Sea of SAMSARA

“SAMSARA” is a Sanskrit word meaning the eternal cycle of life, or literally the “continuous flow” that captures the cycle of birth, life, death and rebirth. Sky Kim’s 30 foot-long scroll series captures this continuous flow, the imprinted path of noble transmigration through microscopic scanning. 

This vitality and non-stop evolutionary movement are what is going on in the center of her work. The visual intensity is a result of meticulous hand drawn labor and the numerous patterns made with a certain logic and creative mind are intriguing to look at, but complicated to create. There’s a constant tug of war embedded in the organic undulations in her work. The images are comforting, yet dizzying; fluid, yet stagnant; organic, yet abstract; delicate, yet obsessive.  Symbols of water and blood represent what we once were in the womb, the beginning point of life, and of her personal memory of her stillborn twin sister. In her work, each circle, the most perfect form found in nature, and each line contain the energy which allows a being to consistently evolve into a complete form of nature.   

Sky Kim is an alumnus of Pratt Institute of New York. She has been exhibited extensively in the USA as well as in her native Korea.

Artist: JURI KIM

Exhibition Title: The Secrets of the Wind

Juri Kim’s work is an attempt at visual communication.  She is interested in the relationship between text and image and between perception and knowledge and personal experiences.  She uses text that she has collected from every day life to create a visual lexicon.  Ms. Kim employs the Braille Alphabet writing system to prove the idea that what you see is what you know.  The act of filling her painting with dots that are units and cells charged with a special and personal meaning is a practice that is reflective of a Zen exercise.  The work is a constant act of finding and losing, remembering and forgetting, asserting and denying, inventing and destroying, daily evoking life and death.  She wants to open a visual window for viewers to explore new possibilities.

Juri Kim was born in Seoul, Korea and received her BFA and MFA at Ewha Women’s University in Seoul. She continued for her MA and Advanced Professional Study at New York University and completed the Artist in the Marketplace Program at the Bronx Museum of the Arts. Kim has held numerous solo exhibitions in the United States and Korea. She also participated in many group exhibitions internationally. She received the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship (NY, 2002), the National Association of Woman Artists, Beatrice Jackson Memorial Award (NY, 1997), and Project Studio Program at Painting Space 122 (NY, 1996-1997), to name just a few. Juri Kim lives in Philadelphia

The exhibitions will be on view at the Dalet Gallery, 141 North 2nd Street, Olde City, Philadelphia, PA 19106

For further information on Dalet Gallery, or to set up media interview with the gallery artists, contact Irena Gobernik at 215-923-2424 or irena@daletart.com or visit www.daletart.com