Jimin Bae is called the “Poet of the Urban Fabric” in her recently seen show at Kate Oh Gallery in New York City. One is greeted with artwork that is both contemplative and joyfully energetic, urban and pastoral.
When viewing the piece titled Snowfall in New York (as seen on the cover), one feels a sense of recognition by the whimsical layering of ink spattered over the towers of New York City in a random fashion. Her marks are simple; splashes, dashes, dots and drops. Yet, they convey the magical fall of snow in the city, blanketing the urban grey. It is a celebration of the present moment in the city, when the quotidian worries disappear and one stops to look, to feel the wet crystals on one’s face and enveloping everything.
In direct contrast is Nocturnal Light, a minimal artwork in four geometric blocks
with machine stitching in the lighter space as nightfall begins. It is quiet in its starkness, thoughtful, cloudy like an old memory.
City in a Drop, with its playful title, is just that, with its blobs of ink, vertical and horizontal lines and smaller marks indicating windows in buildings. It offers a spontaneous view of the city, again in the present moment. The freedom of those marks expresses the free flow of energy that is the city.
The work titled Still Rooted, Yet Rising with its poetic title, is the most impactful of Bae’s expressive work. This is full of vitality and movement in an upsweep of lines in a complex arrangement of patterns and strokes. It is inscribed as a declaration of resilience, power, strength. The base of the work is dark and weighted. From those roots, Bae’s brush is imbued with such spirit and animation, one can visualize her body in movement, dancing upward as lines swirl and reach to an imagined summit. All in a gesture of rising, of overcoming, while still being rooted.
In the piece called The Island’s Lonely Pole, one sees an expanse of linen with machine stitching which insinuates a landscape and the natural world. The stitching is used as a drawing line and reveals a fence and hills in the distance. There is one small square on the lower right side, minute against the magnificence of the wilderness. Are we humans that tiny red square in the vastness? Are we the macrocosm in the universe of Bae’s imagination? Or is that red square simply the artist’s seal, or a mark to balance the overall composition?
She “writes” her story with each image being a stanza, a rhyme, with an intense build up of marks . . .
The last piece, titled The Sea of the Moon, is a beautiful abstract work that packs a visual punch with its bold curve in a sweep of white, and irregular shapes in the center of the moon that hints of the sea. On the edge of the right side are patterns of black lines with stitches indicating a night sky. The composition is artfully balanced, minimal and exciting as it alludes to the power of the light of the moon in our lives.
Each one of Bae’s marks represents a word in her poems. Her gestures offer tranquility and joy. She “writes” her story with each image being a stanza, a rhyme, with an intense build up of marks and by the breadth of her technique. We are fortunate to be privy to her world with its dynamism of brush, ink, and hanji paper. G&S
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