Press Release: Yangah Ham

08.15.00

Yangah Ham was born in 1968 in Seoul, Korea, After studies in Seoul (B.F.A. and
M.F.A. from Seoul National University), she moved to New York, where she received an
M.A. from New York University in 1997. Her video work has been included in
exhibitions throughout Korea, including shows at the Korean Culture & Arts Foundation,
Seoul; Seoul Arts Center; Seoul Metropolitan Museum of Art; Busan Metropolitan
Museum of Art; and the Asian American Art Center, New York. This exhibition will her
first solo project in the U.S.

Yangah Ham's video works investigate life cycles in nature, using durational,
monolithic imagery. Mundane activities are isolated and rendered abstract, nature is
fabricated and exaggerated. Physical manifestations of the passing of time have been a
continued interest; in Cheese (1997), Ham documented a piece of cheese decaying,
presented in real time. Recently, this concentration on the passage of time has evolved
into investigations of dreams.

Yangah Ham was selected for ArtPace's International Artist-in-Residence Program
by Sun Jung Kim, Chief Curator of Sonje Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea. Ham is
in residence with Korean Yiso Bahc and San Antonio-based Dario Robleto.

For ArtPace, Yangah Ham recreates the physical and visual sensations of a dream.
This complex video installation, titled Mongyu Do Won Do, alters the architecture of the
gallery space, taking the viewer on a disorienting voyage. The viewer enters the gallery
on a tall platform, down a claustrophobic tunnel. At the end of the low-ceilinged corridor
is the first projected video image: a view of a jump from a tall building. After turning a
dark corner, another projection is revealed: the saturated colors of a landscape fill the
wall. The view soars over water, cliffs, and a landscape. On another wall, a large-scale
projection shows a dense forest. Smaller-scale multiple images of details from nature
punctuate a third wall of the gallery. Throughout the installation, ambient sounds
heighten the physical senses: breath, wind and other sounds from nature.

Mongyu Do Won Do references a 15th-century Korean painting by An Kyon in the
collection of the Tenri University, Japan. An Kyon was a court painter patronized by
Prince Anpyong of the Choson Dynasty. The painting, Dream Journey to the Peach
Blossom Land, illustrates one of the Prince's dreams in which he journeyed with a friend
to another realm. The painting is divided into two parts: one that represents the ordinary,
familiar world; and the second that depicts the Price's dreamscape of paradise.

Ham's installation makes physical an environment that exists only in her mind, in the
space of her dream. The result is immediate and visceral. The physical environment
heightens the viewer's spatial awareness; the visuals are intense, bold, and iconic.
Although she is not working from a Jungian practice of dream analysis, Ham holds her
dream imagery out as a window to the psyche. Instead of an intellectual search for
symbols and meanings, she encourages a sensual, experiential relationship with our
dreams, a link between the body and the images that inhabit our consciousness.

445 North Main Avenue San Antonio TX 78205 t 210 212 4900 f 210 212 4990 www.artpace.org