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March 22, 2008- May 3, 2008
Reception: March 21, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Atul Bhalla, Osamu James Nakagawa, Jaye Rhee
SEPIA International | The Alkazi Collection
148 W 24th StSepia International is most honored to present COURSE, an exhibition of recent work by Atul Bhalla, Osamu James Nakagawa, and Jaye Rhee. Comprised of sculpture, photographs, and a video installation, COURSE explores our complex and intertwined relationship with that most basic of elements, water.
Atul Bhalla lives and works in the city of New Delhi, India. Engaged with the shared environmental and ethical concerns of a new generation, he examines India's unfolding path towards its relationship to water and its cultural meaning. In "Immersion,” Bhalla uses sand taken directly from the increasingly polluted Yamuna river to make concrete casts of portable water containers. These casts are then placed in water-filled vitrines, drawing a connection between Delhi's historical source for water and the disposable containers of today, now absent of any spiritual connection. Similarly, in his photographic works of “piaus” (water spigots)—a public source of drinking water—Bhalla examines water as both symbol and source for renewal and reexamination.
Osamu James Nakagawa's new images center on the island of Okinawa and its “bantas,” the precipitous and breathtaking cliffs that still bear the scars of the intense battles waged during the Second World War. “For years I have carried with me a vivid memory of the first time I stood atop these cliffs - a memory of beauty in the endless blue expanse of sea and sky intensified by the fearsome height and history that met my downward gaze.” Utilizing digital juxtaposition and shifting perspective, Nakagawa's views of the cliffs serve as pictorial metaphor for the tension between fear and beauty.
In "Sea Saw," a five-channel video piece displayed on monitors, Jaye Rhee is seen walking back and forth between two poles, wrapping a length of yarn around one end, then moving back to wrap it around the next. Each length of yarn is a varying shade of blue. Through this back and forth motion, she slowly builds up a surface that grows until she has covered each screen. Evoking both the inherently mesmerizing motion of waves, and the physical and emotional weight of the ocean, Rhee draws the viewer into an interwoven ballet of movement and whimsical evocation.
Atul Bhalla earned his BFA from the College of Art, Delhi University and his MFA from the School of Art of Northern Illinois University. His work has been in several museum exhibitions, most notably and recently in The Newark Museum's "INDIA: Public Places, Private Spaces" and the Fotographie Forum Frankfurt's "Watching me - Watching India: New Photography from India," as well as several solo exhibitions in major venues throughout India. (www.atulbhalla.com)
Osamu James Nakagawa has had numerous solo and group exhibitions since 1993. His work is included in numerous public collections, including The International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, Rochester, New York; The Corcoran Museum of Fine Arts, Washington D.C.; The Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography; The Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts, Japan; and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. (www.osamujamesnakagawa.com)
Jaye Rhee received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2003. She has had solo shows of her work in Gallery Factory, Seoul, "When All the Lovers were on the Phone at the Same Time;” Chicago Cultural Center, "Video Landscape: Real Fake;" Gallery Loop, Seoul, "Transcape;" and in Galerie Gana Beaubourg, Paris. Her work has also been included in group exhibitions in the US in Chicago, New York, Miami, and Minneapolis, and abroad in France, Ireland, Korea, Japan, and Canada. (www.jrhee.com)
Please join us on Saturday, March 22, at 12:30 pm for a conversation with the artists and Asian Contemporary Art Week feature artist, Navin Rawanchaikul. For more information on Asian Contemporary Art Week events, please visit www.acaw.net.
Books and DVDs related to artists in this show
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