Confronting the Enduring Impact of
Societal Polarity, State Politics, and Cultural Legacies of the Cold War

NEW YORK, NY, October 24th, 2024 - Stephanie Kim Gallery announced the opening of STORIED: COLD WAR LEGACIES. This unique exhibition is composed of works never before shown in New York by artists Mina Cheon, Tracy Weisman and Won Seoung Won. The exhibition offers a fresh perspective on the enduring impact of the Cold War’s social polarities, state politics, and cultural legacies. Curated by Dr. Stephanie Seungmin Kim, the exhibition will run through December 7, with an opening night VIP reception on Thursday, October 24th. The VIP reception will include a performance by Agnieszka Pilat, a Polish-American artist, who is training a trio of robotic dogs to paint autonomously for an upcoming exhibition in Korea, as well as Jin Pureum, a saxophonist and Kengchakaj, a pianist, will interpret the show with new and improvised songs.

STORIED presents a spectrum of strong voices that stand in stark contrast to what we hear and see in the media, offering a fresh and engaging perspective on the world. The exhibition’s exploration of how diplomatic relations, global peace, and women’s rights continue to be at the fore by Cold War era power structure resonates with the current political climate, marking the exhibition highly relevant and engaging to our times.

As these geopolitical constructs persist, the artworks invite contemplation of the lingering effects of post-WWII alliances and Cold War anxieties. This exhibition is a timely reflection on art’s role to capture past and present cultural tensions. More importantly, the exhibition serves to promote critical awareness, stimulate conversations, and encourage storytelling about the personal and the political histories we inherit, the chaos we live in, and hope for a future that we shape collectively.

Stephanie Kim’s concept of STORIED encapsulates the past and the future, intertwining ideas of power and control with intergenerational personal political histories. “With it both current and legacy meanings, denoting power and control, refers to traditional and social media - all of which seemed apt and compelling in the context of the exhibition and its subject matter,” said gallery director Stephanie Kim. “There is a powerful interplay between artists who have had vastly different life experiences and yet share many of the same themes, perspectives and points-of-view in their work. Given the current state of world politics and media, STORIED is timely and important.”

Tracy Weisman’s explosive reimagining of Cold War-era Duck and Cover illustrations evoke a range of emotions, from anxieties of the Cold War tension and global warfare, such as the Cuban Missile Crisis of the past to current United States politics related to women’s rights, privacy, and protection. For those growing up in Korea, including Won Seoung Won and curator of the exhibition Stephanie Kim, the wail of sirens from routine military drills were a part of everyday life. The drills became a numbing repetition of the Korean conflict played over time, a stark reminder of the trauma of a country in constant war. Weisman’s work, in this context, is intuitively connected to Mina Cheon’s politically charged pop paintings in the straightforward visual narrative that carries complex cultural meanings. The parallels are thought-provoking. Cheon’s 007 (2013) creates a tension between state propaganda and artistic commentary, what is permissible in creative expression in one country can be deadly in another - all three artists are a testament to the inspiring power of art to respond to the world around them.

Mina Cheon’s paintings, inspired by Pop Art and Social Realism, create a mirroring effect of North Korean women portrayed as military fembots and dehumanized state machines. By amplifying the imaginary portrait of the North Korean other, Cheon inserts her own stormy passing down North Korean lineage and familiar connections that were broken and interrupted by the Korean War. As an artist, she responds to what is often left out in media and popular culture about the Koreas beyond the schismatic charge toggled between cathartic reunification opportunities and nuclear threat. Global warfare witnessed through girls’ playthings is expressed in both Cheon’s 99 Miss Kim(s) dolls installation commemorating September 9, the birth of Communism in North Korea, and contrasts Cheon’s Dresses for Different Events (2008), a collection of life-size South Korean 70s paper doll vintage dresses, each representing a different event in the lift of a South Korean woman.

While Cheon’s playful paper cut-out dresses are from her own childhood, Weisman also frequently uses vintage objects to decode, reminding us that as Churchill said, “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Weisman recreates her 2017 work Indivisible? and entitles it Precipice. The US flag, rendered in black and white textiles, replaces stars with emoji of things that can either divide or unite us.

STORIED’s third component is ambiguity, evoked by Won Seoung Won’s Sea of Journalists. Won uses a collage and layers of 2000 photographs to recreate the overwhelming chaos of a stormy sea. It is a new narrative for a world that is simultaneously fictitious and true. The painting depicts various journalists reporting on a typhoon, each with a distinct approach: some dive headfirst into the eye of the storm, others skillfully navigate the treacherous waves, while a few lurk like bloodthirsty hyenas, waiting for a disaster-related opportunity. The vast, churning sea represents the complexity of the story—a chaotic and layered reality that feels too overwhelming to fully comprehend.

About the Artists

Mina Cheon is a new media artist, scholar, and activist best known for her “Polipop” paintings inspired by Pop Art and Social Realism. Her practice draws inspiration from the partition of the Korean peninsula, exemplified by her parallel body of work created under her North Korean alter ego, Kim Il Soon, in which she enlists a range of mediums including painting, sculpture, video, installation. She is represented by the Ethan Cohen Gallery in New York and exhibiting for the first time with Stephanie Kim Gallery. Cheon has shown her art at the American University Museum of Art, Smith College Museum of Art, Baltimore Museum of Art, Seoul Museum of Art, Korea Society in New York, the Asia Society Triennial, and the Busan Biennale.

Tracy Weisman is a visual storyteller and interdisciplinary artist with studios in Narragansett, RI and Palm Springs, CA. As a former speechwriter, Tracy used metaphors to tell her clients’ stories, and she does the same in her visual arts practice. She draws inspiration from the inherent stories hidden in found and collected objects, and incorporates a variety of mediums in her work, including painting, mixed media collage, art garments, photography, textiles, mixed-media, collage and assemblage. Her work has addressed autobiographical and political themes such as memory, grief, body image, the American presidency, gun violence, and the clerical sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church.

Seoung Won is an artist known for her unique and delicate photo collage works that blend reality and imagination. The artist constructs her works based on stories of friends and acquaintances, incorporating her own imaginative approach. Won’s photographs involve digital manipulation, and the spaces and subjects are meticulously captured before being carefully overlaid to evoke an analog sensibility. Traveling around the world, the artist combines photographic sources she personally captured, synthesizing images from different locations and times into a single, new composition. Won Seoung Won completed her studies at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in Germany and the Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln. 

Agnieszka Pilat is a painter and conceptual artist who experiments with machines as subjects and collaborators. Like religious icons and royal portrayals of noble ancestry, Pilat’s paintings conceptually trace the lineage of 21st-century robotics and artificial intelligence back to the steam-powered mechanisms of the Industrial Revolution. She grew up in Łódź, Poland during the height of the Cold War and witnessed the fall of the Polish People's Republic. In 2004, she moved to California to pursue a Bachelor of Fine Arts with an emphasis in illustration and painting. While studying at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, she developed a passion for portraiture and continues to emphasize this in her contemporary works. Pilat’s career changed dramatically when she painted a portrait of a vintage fire alarm bell. Pilat began to explore the intersection of art and technology, seeking out artistic opportunities and collaborations with Bay Area tech giants. Pilat maintained residencies with organizations such as SpaceX, Wrightspeed, Autodesk and Waymo, and now paints with Boston Dynamics’ robot dog,  Spot. 

Pureum Jin and Kengchakaj met in 2015 during their master's degree studies at the Manhattan School of Music, where they developed a unique partnership through diverse musical experiments and explorations. Both are accomplished bandleaders in their own style, yet they have cultivated a remarkable synergy, whether performing as a duo or in larger ensembles. For this exhibition, they drew inspiration from themes provided by three different artists, infusing each with their own musical creativity. Their aim is to express these ideas through entirely new compositions, showcasing the distinctive chemistry between them.

Stephanie Seungmin Kim (PhD, RCA) is a curator, gallerist, and writer who has worked with more than 600 artists around the world. Her companies and gallery have directed more than 80 international shows and produced two documentary films. She frequently speaks about new multidisciplinary curatorial methods, is a part of Global (De)Centre and co-leads a pillar of MIT’s new Humanities group.

Exhibition Details:

VIP Preview, October 24th, 6-9PM

78 Franklin Street, 2nd floor

New York, NY 10013

www.stephaniekimgallery.com

Opens from October 25th  to December 7th

By appointment

EMAIL director@sleeperssummit.com / info@stephaniekimgallery.com

PHONE +1 929 339 6574

For more information, contact: info@hudsoncutler.com