South Korean artist Hwang Seon Tae’s remarkable Night Windows is his first exhibition in Los Angeles, and it is a stunner. At CMay Gallery in mid-city through November 30th, the luminous new works from his Lightbox series are truly astonishing.
Using literal illumination through images of windows, we are invited into perfectly designed, innately architectural rooms and spaces, through which we can see outdoor views or portals of light. In some cases, we see shadows from trees cast in light spilling onto walls. The result in each work is something incandescent.
Asked if the works were representative of a Zen-like or meditative state, the artist demurred. Tse related that the works are to be taken “however you wish to take them, as long as you enjoy them and feel pleasure from them.”
Blissfully free of humans, while several pieces feature a peacefully sleeping cat or dog, the spaces are primarily pristine, well-designed living spaces. The emphasis on the domestic creates the sense of a place of being at rest, a true home.
Demur as he will, there is a highly spiritual component to the work, an emotional peace that vibrates through the observer.
Tse also explained that he views each of his precise lines as a kind of representative, visual language, and that each line has meaning and resonance for him as an artist.
The use of light is enormously appealing, drawing the eye of course, but also engaging the mind and heart. It feels both transcendent and sweet, balming and beneficient. His work is also concerned with simply the use of light, dimension, and space.
His line drawings illuminated by LED create an aura of stillness and restfulness, but also the provide a way for the viewer to step into that illumination and feel awash in its brightness. The dimensionality welcomes the viewer to step within each work.
Some images include bright spots of color, as in the work above.
Tse’s manipulation of the physicality of the acrylic plate is a testament to his art, and in its perfection, also pulls viewers into the contemplation of simplicity, beauty, and minimalism.
There are a number of other pieces from earlier series also on exhibit at CMay: a glass sculpture representing a rumpled newspaper; soft, out of focus photographic images of objects.
In an art talk Saturday night, the artist said “I am most interested in the objects themselves. In giving them meaning, attaching importance to them.”
In a sense, he makes the objects – sofa, lamp, chair, window – into a character in his visual narrative.
Above, a view of one of Tse’s works taken through a gallery window, a perfect introduction to the exhibition.
Born in Korea, trained in sculpture and Glass Art at Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle in Germany, the exhibit is mesmerizing and involving. And it would be difficult to overstate the sense of calmness, the sense of joy which the viewer feels when “coming into the light.”
CMay Gallery is located at 5828 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA, 90036.
- Genie Davis; photos: Genie Davis, and provided by gallery