Three Solo Shows at Ch’i Contemporary Fine Art

Hee Sook Kim, Encounters, twelve monumental paintings and video installation collaboration with Christopher Shultis, 2009.

Hee Sook Kim: Encounters

May 7 - June 8, 2009

Public Reception: May 8, 6 - 9 pm

Sy Gresser: Divine Yearning

Alice Zinnes: Druid Dreams of the Danaka - Paintings and Drawings

April 9 - May 3, 2009

Public Reception: April 16, 6 - 9 pm

During the month of April, Ch’i Contemporary Fine Art is presenting two solo shows, “Divine Yearning,” carved wood sculptures by Sy Gresser and “Druid Dreams of the Danaka: Paintings and Drawings” by Alice Zinnes. 

Sy Gresser has been sculpting in stone and wood for over 50 years. He believes that art celebrates human existence on a spiritual level and transcends the ideas of religion- any religion as well as the ideas of race. Of his work he is fond of saying, ” … when I look at a stone, if I capture some human warmth and sense of meaning, I feel I have been successful. That is all I ask…” His sculptures have been exhibited in both solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States, Belgium, England and Mexico as well as in the American Embassies in Abu Dhabi, the Fiji Islands, France, India, Madagascar, Nigeria and Switzerland. 

For their part, Alice Zinnes’ oil paintings, large charcoal drawings and intimate watercolors contain the spirit of the storyteller in the guise of the abstract adventurer. Provoked to visual explosions by the great Indian epic, The Ramayana, and by Celtic mythologies - they are not illustrations or literal translations; instead, they are transformations from myths to mysterious worlds where the boundaries between underworld and waking earth are traversable, terror coexists with joy, and loss must always yield to renewal. Alice Zinnes has been exhibiting her work for over 30 years, including a 25-year retrospective at The Art Center at Queens College. She has been reviewed in the New York Times, New York Newsday, New York Arts Magazine, Art New England; as well as interviewed on the NPR-affiliated radio station WJFF.

On May 8, the gallery will open the show “Encounters,” twelve monumental paintings by Hee Sook Kim and video installation collaboration with Christopher Shultis. This is Ms. Kim’s third solo show at the gallery. 

Hee Sook Kim states about her work: “Words are openings, portals to other worlds rooted in magical places where sense is a new way of thinking, where thinking is embodied in breathing. Intimate visual spaces conjured up by spirituality invite viewers to a special journey: into an imaginary land, the work. When I immigrated to a new country, with its different environments, foreign languages and people, living and communicating were for me a struggle and challenge, sometimes enjoyable, but also agonizing. I feel like a permanent alien, one who doesn’t emotionally belong anywhere, but who belongs physically to America: a wild plant living in unknown places, which has a healing power, a power hopefully found in my work.”

Hee Sook Kim has earned several artist residencies in the United States and abroad. She has exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bronx Museum, the Drawing Center, Asian American Art Center, Bronx River Art Center, and the Queens Museum in New York, Lincoln Center in Colorado, and the Museum of Natural Sciences in North Carolina.  She has also been the recipient of a Pollack Krasner Award. “Encounters” will be on view through June 8, 2009.

Ch’i Contemporary Fine Art, established in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in 1999 and directed by Tracy Causey-Jeffery is committed to exhibiting vibrant contemporary art by living artists: both mid-career and emerging. 

Ch’i Contemporary Fine Art. 293 Grand Street, between Roebling and Havemeyer. Williamsburg. Brooklyn, NY  11211.

Phone 718 218 9347 / 718 218 8939

www.chicontemporaryfineart.com

Regular hours - Wed - Sun 11 am - 7 pm, Mon 9 am - 5 pm