“Placid” at The Border Project Space
Curated by Jamie Martinez
Sept 25 – Oct 17, 2020
The Border Project Space is pleased to present Placid, a group show with works by Sandra Eula Lee, Cecile Chong, and Snow Yunxue Fu. The exhibition, curated by Jamie Martinez, will be on display from September 25 to October 17, 2020.
Placid considers the notion of tranquil contemplation and investigates the relationships between the environment, modernization, and human existence. Influenced by the serene aesthetic of East Asian traditional landscapes, the artists capture and portray the harmony of nature and humanity as one.
Sandra Eula Lee’s Portable pond, an installation created with scattered machine-cut sheets of acrylic, is reminiscent of water, evoking calmness and reflection. A distinctive dichotomy is at play: the industrial qualities of the piece, juxtaposed by the natural characteristic of what is being portrayed, ponders the relationship between rapid urban development and green spaces. Portable pond invites you to look at the mirroring surface of the acrylic sheets and, in turn, yourself. The installation’s industrial components consider the complex contrast of how one is to reflect while modernization is accelerating and uprooting all of society and the environment.
Cecile Chong’s whimsical paintings, portraying episodes of imagery obtained from vintage children’s books, consider cross-cultural narratives that have only increased due to growing globalization. The clever use of varying materials, sourced from all around the world (pigments from Morocco and India, volcanic ash from Ecuador and Asian paper), bolsters the notion of cultural interaction. Additionally, the twenty-five to thirty coats of encaustic alludes to the layering of identities and places, a concomitant result of cultural exchanges. Chong’s works have a nostalgic quality providing the viewer an intimate experience of looking back at their past while also contemplating the present.
“While the humans are staying indoors, the corals are slowly making a come back.”
Trench, Snow Yunxue Fu’s hypnotizing 3D moving image artwork which projects digital abstractions of the ominous yet majestical oceanic territory. The subliminal experience of traveling through the expansive and foreign space illustrates nature’s beauty but also reveals the extensive damage of human activity with glitches that are triggered by data collected from environmental research. Diving deeper and deeper into the ocean, Fu presents a cerebral journey that immerses the onlooker into the techno sublime and activates rumination about the potential demise of marine life.
Cecile Chong was born in Ecuador to Chinese parents. She is a multimedia artist working in painting, sculpture, and installation layering materials, identities, and histories. Fellowships and residencies include The Block Gallery, BRIC Media Arts, Joan Mitchell Center, Wave Hill Winter Workspace, Lower East Side Printshop, Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Grant. Solo exhibitions include Smack Mellon, Kenise Barnes Fine Art, DUMBO Window, Five Myles, and BRIC House. Her public art installation EL DORADO – The New Forty-Niners has been installed in the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn. She received an MFA from Parsons, an MA in education from Hunter College, and a BA in Studio Art from Queens College.
Sandra Eula Lee (Korean-American), explores tensions between industrial development, rural landscape, and the act of making place through creative hacks and the handmade. Her work has been featured in a survey at The Hilliard Museum, LA, and Art Space Pool in Seoul, South Korea. Exhibitions include Delaware Contemporary, Goucher College in Baltimore, the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College, Inside-Out Museum in Beijing, Xiangsi Art Museum in Tianjin, Nanji Art Studio in Seoul, DadaPost in Berlin, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Smack Mellon, and Rush Arts Gallery in New York. Her work has been supported by the Asian Cultural Council, the LMCC, the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts,
and recently by the Mellon Foundation and NJSCA/Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation. Lee received her MFA from Hunter College and currently runs the Expanded Sculpture program at Franklin & Marshall College.
Snow Yunxue Fu is a New York-based International New Media Artist, Curator, and Assistant Arts Professor in the Department of Photography and Imaging at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. She obtained an MFA degree in studio art from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2014. Fu’s artwork has been shown internationally including New York Gallery of Chinese Art, Ars Electronica, Venice Architecture Biennale, Pioneer Works, Sediton, Shenzhen Independent Animation Biennale, Current Museum of Art, Thoma Art House, The Wrong Biennale, and etc. Her work has been collected by institutions such as the Currents Museum in New York, and she remains the youngest artist collected by the National Art Museum of China. Her interviews and reviews have been covered in The New York Times, the Boston Globe.
Social distance orders are mandated: one person or a pair are allowed in the space at once. Masks are required.
