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Jiyoung Yoon hangs from a frame attached to the ceiling. She is held in place between two parallel metal bars by the end of her ponytail, which is tied to the highest bar, and her own strength as she clings to the lower bar. As she hangs two assistants work to release her from the structure by cutting through her hair with scissors. Each performer has a solitary task to complete, the most urgent of which belongs to Jiyoung who struggles as she is cut away, her feet kicking and searching for some stable structure she can push against to relieve her slipping grip. Beneath her is a turtle shell, which acts symbolically as well as physically, as an object meant to absorb the force of her fall and provide a space to land. Jiyoung’s objects and performances draw from theories of human development in psychology, such as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Maslow described five stages of developmental growth and created milestones that need to be reached in order to complete the process of establishing the self. The pinnacle of growth is described as self-actualization, which must be preceded by the fulfillment of basic needs like food, water, and shelter as well as more complex needs like safety, love, and esteem. The milestones of development in Maslow’s hierarchy are transparent and provide a structure that, when drawn out as a chart, enable things like food and other material necessities to be considered within the same logical framework as more abstract concepts like confidence and morality. Jiyoung uses both the logic and the physical representations of this framework to create sculptures and performances that act as counter points to the philosophies of development that predict a clear path from A to B. Instead the objects and performances she orchestrates give form to a process of becoming where the subject is working in many different directions toward a meaningful understanding of self, knowing that this lofty goal may be impossible to achieve.

Andy Kincaid creates works that reveal the experience of nature as an unrequited affair; a fantasy fueled by representations of immense beauty and perpetuated by the impossibility of simulating nature faithfully. For example, amateur photographs made of the sunrise or sunset often feature an orange ball hovering in a bright orange sky with a dark strip of black or deep brown carving the horizon line into existence as a distant silhouette. Kincaid uses a video of a similar sunrise with the inclusion of a body of water, the gentle rocking reflective surface of which serves to extend the colors of the fiery sky from the top of the frame to the bottom. A familiar scene shot on a handheld digital camera, but Kincaid’s video includes the frantic movement of the frame searching for the desired subject as the shooter fumbles with the camera bouncing from ground to sky before settling on the sun, rising above the horizon. The camera’s movement suggests the shooters anxious need to create a record of the event he is witnessing. Kincaid takes a still from his video and uses it to search amongst the never-ending number of orange sunrises uploaded to the Internet. Each image is an inadequate representation of the actual event they depict, but the presence of these images together acts as an assertion of the each image creator’s existence. These images may be authorless in regards to technique, but the choice to share the image on the Internet gives evidence of an acting body. Kincaid then returns the found images to a material state layering them together to create a single image. The many layers of sunrises cause the deep-set silhouette of the horizon to fade and what remains is a simple gradient of orange and yellow.

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JIYOUNG YOON is an artist working in sculptural installation and video. Yoon received a BFA in Sculpture(Hongik Scholarship 2006-2008) from Hongik University, Seoul, Korea and an MFA in Sculpture from School of Art Institute of Chicago (Dean’s scholarship 2012-2013). She has been awarded from Edward L. Ryerson fellowship, and attended MacDowell Colony and ACRE artist residency in 2013. She has had a two-person show at The Bike Room, Chicago and has been selected for a show at Kim Chong Young Sculpture Museum “New Generation Sculptors”. She has been introduced by a program “Cultural Contemplation” –New Generation of Artist, MBC Broadcast, Korea, 2010.

More information about Jiyoung Yoon can be found at jiyoungyoon.com.

ANDY KINCAID currently lives and works in Jackson Hole, WY, where he founded the artist-run gallery In The Pines with Thomas Macker. Kincaid’s past work includes exhibitions at Altered Esthetics and Susan Hensel Gallery, Minneapolis, The Neville Museum, Green Bay, The National Museum of Wildlife Art, Jackson Hole, and a solo exhibition at the Trout Museum of Art, Appleton WI, as well as permanent public sculptures in Wisconsin and Kansas. Upcoming projects include a solo exhibition at the Center for the Arts, Jackson Hole, and an exhibition in New York through the curatorial team Picture Menu. Kincaid received his B.A. in Studio Art from Lawrence University, concentrating in Sculpture and Photography, Physics, and Art History.

More information about Andy Kincaid can be found at andykincaid.com.

KATE BOWEN is an artist, educator and curator living in Chicago. She is a teaching artist with the high school outreach program Picture Me and an adjunct faculty member at the Illinois Institute of Art. She is the Video Programming Coordinator at the Museum of Contemporary Photography.

More information about Kate Bowen can be found at katembowen.com.

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Tags: ACRE, Andy Kincaid, Jiyoung Yoon, Kate Bowen, Pilsen