GREENWICH, CONN.- Heather Gaudio Fine Art is presenting Formal Approaches, featuring works by Hyun Jung Ahn, Mojé Assefjah, Mio Yamato and Nadia Yaron. The exhibition is on view October 4 – November 15.
The artists in the show share varied yet distinct formal approaches to their creative process. Through abstraction, they explore themes around emotional and psychological spaces and how natural elements shape our physical worlds and surroundings.
About the Artists:
Hyun Jung Ahn presents her ongoing investigations into memory, psychological interiorities, and the interpretation of emotional states of being. Offering an interplay between color and form, her paintings create a balanced composition made with different pieces of linen or canvas that are painted and stitched together. An artist-in-residency program at MASS MoCA in 2018 led Ahn to discover a new way to make a mark and create a line by using a sewing machine. Since then, the sewn thread has become integral to her work, offering Ahn a way to explore chance and geometric abstraction by dividing, fragmenting and joining different shapes on the picture plane. Coupled with a thoughtfully colored palette or more muted, monochromatic tones, Ahn’s paintings are eloquent modernist abstractions. Ahn has exhibited widely in the United States and in Korea, where she also teaches. Her works are represented in many private and corporate collections including TD Bank Corporation Art Collection, Toronto.
Mojé Assefjah was born in Tehran and moved to Germany with her family in 1986 where she attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. She later did artist-in-residency programs in Rome and Spain. This is the first time the artist exhibits in the United States and the exhibition is made possible with the collaboration of Galerie Tanit in Munich. Working with traditional egg tempera, Assefjah paints vividly chromatic works that are heavily influenced by the Italian Old Masters, miniature Persian paintings and calligraphy. Referencing still life and landscape genres, the artist’s luminous, jeweled toned paintings are tableaus into alternate spaces, distant landscapes or dream-like visions into what lies beyond a doorway or window. Assefjah updates these depictions to our current times by straddling representation and abstraction. The artist has participated in various solo and group exhibitions in Europe and the Near East and her paintings are in notable private and public collections including Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich; Gabriele Münter and Johannes Eichner Foundation, Munich; Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; Guangdon Art Museum, China; Colección olorVISUAL, Barcelona; KICO Sammlung, Allianz Versicherungen, Münchner Rück, Munich; and BIZ, Bank für Internationale Zahlungsausgleich, Basel.
Mio Yamato takes on a near ritualistic approach to her accumulation of dotted and linear gestures, creating densely layered imagery. With her signature marks, Yamato’s paintings evoke organic phenomena, geological terrains and other patterns seen in natural formations. Her works explore notions of universality, systems and ever-changing continuums that occur on the micro and macro scale. Whether using the dot or line as a mark, the artist shifts the direction and patterns as she works allowing for chance to take over her process. Yamato is also known for creating monumental site-specific mural installations, such as Under My Skin at the Kyoto City Kyocera Museum. The artist hails from Kyoto and has exhibited widely in Asia in group and solo exhibitions. She has also been the recipient of numerous awards including an artist residency program at Fundación Casa Wabi in Oaxaca, Mexico. This is the third time HGFA features Yamato in an exhibition in the United States, thanks to the collaboration with COHJU Contemporary in Kyoto.
Nadia Yaron takes a unique approach to represent and experience the landscape as a genre. Drawing inspiration from the vast vistas provided by landscapes, Yaron reduces the bands of sky, tiers of land in the distance and closer topographies in the foreground into columnar sculptures. The artist carves and sands different types of stone, such as alabaster, marble and other locally sourced stone, and salvaged wood. She shapes each piece finishing them in varying textures, all the while following their natural veins and grains and working around their natural characteristics. Once each piece is finished, Yaron stacks the pieces together into a singular column, simplifying the visual layers of a landscape, bringing the boundless spaces and terrains to a human scale. Through these vertical structures, the Brazilian-born American artist references impermanence and our relationship with nature. Yaron has had many solo and group exhibitions in the United States, and her sculptures are highly sought after by collectors here and abroad.
