![]() How to Slow Down is an apt title of the exhibition, which may refer both to the physical act of meditating on each brushstroke that fills a canvas as well as a look backward to what many believe was a simpler time. Both suggest meditation and escape from chaotic city life. Although Ranson’s work seems very different from Hwang’s, they share many commonalities. His rich, bright paintings are compulsively filled with marks and brushstrokes. His exhibition at Adobe Books offers a view of men and women equally united with each other and the wilderness surrounding them. In contrast to Hwang’s futuristic dystopia, Kyle Ranson’s works depict a biblical idealism. ![]() Perhaps ‘nature’, or what is left of it, provides some kind of relief from the hyperactive world. Perhaps Hwang is suggesting that redemption lies in the unforeseeable future. In another print, a line of bicyclists also turn away from the viewer, escaping over hills into a mystery. She turns her back on the chaos, facing an unknown, blue abyss. In one digital print, a solitary female sits on the edge of the world, her back to the viewer. ![]() I prefer the Socratic Method: works that gradually cause you to challenge your own beliefs, as opposed to artwork that preaches. I believe that this is a positive aspect of Hwang’s work - I dislike art that beats you over the head with a clear-cut and unambiguous moral. By paying equal attention to the mundane and the horrifying, Hwang provides an oddly objective perspective of the world.īut what is Hwang’s ultimate suggestion, or conclusion? There is no clear didactic path to redemption. ![]() There is no cohesive structure or focus to her universe, only a vast, sprawling plane interrupted by pockets of activity. Hwang’s architecture consists of irrational buildings and distorted architecture, reflecting the constructs of an over-stimulated mind. Faceless humans dressed in diapers or sporting tadpoles embrace, worship, and murder in a sprawling environment cohabited by fanged monsters, toilets, assembly lines, and bodily orifices: a pink clouded asshole floats above the bustling city life. The inhabitants of Hwang’s works are both infantile and robotic. However, Hwang contradicts the viewer’s expectations by filling her expansive worlds with troubling details, creating her own version of a disturbed Richard Scarry Busytown book. Her animations and digital prints initially conjure 1970s children’s cartoons, filled with psychedelic imagery and pastel-colored, flat line drawings. I find Eunjung Hwang’s work, culled from her “Fabulous Creature” series, disturbing and fascinating. Through the use of media and imagery that at first glance appear child-like or naive, they contradict the simplistic expectations of the viewer and point to complicated resolutions.īlabbable Doodads, which just closed at the non-profit gallery Mission 17, provides an anarchic view of the present and the future. How does one find meaning in the chaotic, apocalyptic world surrounding the humble, insignificant individual? Three recent San Francisco exhibitions ask this eternally relevant question. How to Slow Down, Kyle Ranson, Adobe BooksĪHA, Sahar Khoury, įirst in a series of reviews of alternative venues in the Mission District. Blabbable Doodads, Miriam Dym & Eunjung Hwang, Mission 17
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