Saints, Shamans, and Batshit Crazies
Inna Art Space is proud to announce the first solo exhibition in China by American artist Mie Yim, which will open on April 8th, 2023. The exhibition will feature her recent works including eight on canvas and twelve on paper. Concurrently, the artist will also have two related solo exhibitions at gallery spaces in New York - "Belladonna" at Olympia Gallery (March 31 - May 6) and "Nightshade" at Simone Subal Gallery (April 14 - May 20).
The two exhibitions in New York are titled after poisonous plants of the Solanaceae family, while the exhibition in Hangzhou, "Saints, Shamans, and Batshit Crazies," uses a personified metaphor to create a dialogue among the three exhibitions. The roles of saint, shaman, and batshit crazies exist in the dichotomy of "selflessness" and "selfhood," and these three distinct identities flow into each other, generating a sense of extreme fragmentation and fluidity in Yim's works.
Obsession and Contradiction
Mie Yim's studio is located in the Bronx, far away from the ritzy areas of the city. This spacious studio has high ceilings and is filled with sunshine, which makes one feel relaxed and comfortable. According to Yim, "In New York City, this is one of the few remaining artists' studio buildings that are still raw."
An artist's work is a fusion of various influences, loves, and obsessions. Within Yim's work, there are also many other artists’ influences, such as Philip Guston, Willem de Kooning, Caravaggio, Zurbaran, Pontormo, Louise Bourgeois, etc. The furry toys in her works come from the artist's early experiences, and she enjoys the mixed feeling that it brings to her works, which are filled with contradictory elements.
In Yim's paintings, the interior and exterior of the imagery are indistinguishable, and figuration and abstraction compete for space on the canvas. Thus, the image becomes a contradictory collection: supersaturated colors and soft tonal variations mixed, with lines, dots, and peaky brushstrokes appearing and disappearing in turn. Yim's works are both dangerous and captivating.
Plunging into the Battlefield
"I like to paint based on my intuition," she said, "so that painting feels like falling without a safety net." Mie Yim's painting abandons linear, planned, or logical methods of composition, instead daringly creating something out of nothing.
This uncertainty comes from Mie Yim's life experience, where art has established a certain meaning and purpose within her fragmented identity. Mie Yim was born in Seoul, then moved to Hawaii, then to Philadelphia for college, and then to New York - always moving eastward. This constant change left her with an indelible sense of disconnection and longing.
Although Korean tradition is the source of her cultural perspective, Mie Yim absorbed western influences, from Renaissance art to American post-war abstractionists. Regarding the state of creation, Mie Yim said, "The blank canvas stares at you, full of hope. I know it must go through such hardships, ugliness, doubt, and change. Turn it upside down, turn it around, forget it, and then see if there is something that I can do about it. This sounds like a cliché, but I'm here, in the thick and thin strokes. This is a battlefield."
Every new canvas is difficult to "destroy", but it must be "destroyed"
Mie Yim's paintings were representational and narrative in the early 2000s and later became completely abstract. Her latest works completed during the pandemic present a fascinating combination of representation and abstraction.
She stares at the canvas, and over the course of a week to a month, some shapes begin to form: using vertical or horizontal linear shapes as a framework, the shapes gradually begin to resemble figures. Then, as the image solidifies, a character emerges. At this point, she often turns the canvas upside down, as Mie Yim is highly alert to the traditional and compact sensations that arise when attention is attached to a fixed image.
Mie Yim describes the process of breaking through this solidification as follows: "When I turn it upside down, I have about 15 minutes to let some crazy things happen before the image begins to become familiar again."
Enduring, Undeniable Truth
Mie Yim's visual language has evolved from cute and quirky stuffed characters years ago to fragmented forms as if they had been put through a shredder and reassembled in some kind of internal and external reversal. In this new body of work, she aims to push beyond traditional figuration and abstraction and to expand on the vocabulary of painting, drawing inspiration from images such as spikes, polyps, fur, plants, and the coronavirus.
Comfort and discomfort mingle in these powdered-pigment images made up of incongruous fragments. Like viruses, they appear fragile, innocent, and distant, as our experiential perception cannot reach the world in which they exist. This sense of isolation falls beyond not only reality but also the imagination. Yet, it remains intimately connected to us, and these mechanisms beyond our experience confine our structures of life and everyday experience, just like a political allegory.
In nature, everything still grows, replicates, and mutates; chaos and terror will forever accompany beauty and miracles. In her paintings, Mie Yim states: "I hope in the end there is something that is undeniable and true - as if it has always existed.”
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