Sunday, February 20, 2011 at 12:01AM
Fabian Lewkowicz in Santa Monica College, art
Artist Debbie Han discusses her installation entitled "The Battle of Conception" during the opening reception of her exhibit “The Eye of Perception" at Santa Monica College's Pete & Susan Barrett Art Gallery on Saturday, Frbruary 19, 2011.
"The Eye of Perception" is an exhibit of ceramic sculptures and large digital photographs that investigate the concepts of cultural identity, authenticity and perception. Taking the familiar and universal beauty icon of Venus, Han turns it into a powerful metaphor that captures contemporary cultural dynamics.
“The Eye of Perception” has been traveling around the world since last fall to galleries in Munich, Germany; Seoul, South Korea; and Hong Kong. Han – a Korean-American from Los Angeles who studied at SMC, received her B.A. in Art from UCLA and a Master’s of Fine Arts from Pratt Institute in New York – is an award-winning artist whose work has been displayed in dozens of galleries and museums throughout the world.
Han’s new work explores cultural conceptions and misconceptions of beauty while raising questions about traditional standards of who women are perceived from an eastern and western point of view.
One of the pieces in the exhibit – “The Battle of Conception” – is an excellent example of how Han plays with concepts of beauty. Consisting of 32 pieces of Venus busts installed on a large table in a chess game format, the busts have faces featuring random mixes of diverse races and ethnicities – for example, slanted Asian eyes with a flaring African mouth on one face and a hooked Jewish nose with an extremely thin Caucasian mouth on another.
Han says the heads are made not in traditional sculptural materials but in an ancient Asian ceramic type named Celadon. Han took up the challenge of exploring this material in Korea, and the project took seven years to complete.
The exhibition also presents larger sized Venus busts with reconstructed faces in another rare ceramic material named White Porcelain, shimmering with a mysterious tinge of blue. Due to the technical difficulties of firing these large-sized asymmetrical forms, the artist toiled through 130 pieces before successfully firing a set of 10 in three years. The evidence of enduring through hard labor imbues Han’s works with a haunting presence that captivates the viewer. The sense of “beauty’ that engulfs the viewer here is almost antithetical to the academic notions of beauty subscribed through education. The work confronts the question of the meaning of beauty as a way of perception.
Han’s exploration of the role of perception as a shaping force of one’s reality culminates in the new photo series titled “The Eye of Perception,” which presents in each image several different faces superimposed together in a masterful way so as to allow viewing of each of the different facial features simultaneously with the multitude. Contemporary photography as an innovative expression of the day is proven in Han’s acclaimed photo series, “Graces.” The artist photographs actual bodies of Asian woman and combines them with Western heads of classical Goddess sculptures. Then the entire skin texture of each figure is digitally rendered in extreme details to achieve marble-like smoothness. Each ”Grace” is caught in the midst of an everyday act, set against a dark background. The illusive nature of these figures brings together elements of the past/present, East/West, human/ideal. At the same time, they leave a wide room for individual interpretations and perceptions.
Han’s works have been shown internationally, including 13 solo shows in the United States, Korea, China, Germany, and Spain and more than 70 group exhibitions throughout the United States, Asia and Europe.
Han was awarded The Sovereign Asian Art Prize in 2009 and was the recipient of The Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2007. She was invited as a resident artist at numerous international art organizations including ARCUS Project in Japan, Youngeun Museum of Contemporary Art and Gyeonggi Museum of Art in Korea, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Nebraska, and Schinkel Progressive Residency in Berlin. Han’s works were exhibited at Santa Barbara Museum, The Saatchi Museum, Seoul Museum of Art, and Kunstlerhaus Bethanien. She currently works in Seoul and Los Angeles.