Curated by Young Min Moon

  • Exhibition Dates: September 9 – September 29, 2023 
  • Opening Reception: September 9, 3-6 PM
  • Venue: AHL Foundation (2605 Frederick Douglass Boulevard, New York, NY 10030)
  • Gallery hours: Wednesday to Saturday, 12 pm – 6 pm

AHL Foundation is pleased to present Predicament Room, a solo exhibition of new works by New York-based Korean artist Hong Seon Jang, who received the 2023 AHL-AAW Solo Exhibition Grant. Curated by Young Min Moon, Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Art at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the exhibition will be on view from September 9th to September 29th, 2023, with an opening reception on Saturday, September 9th from 3-6 PM.

Predicament Room grapples with the complexities and conflicts of Asian American identity through a series of evocative installations, sculptures, and objects. Drawing on his experiences growing up in militarized South Korea and the pressures faced as an immigrant in America, Jang gives artistic form to indignities, resentments, and ambivalences often suppressed in Asian American life. Works such as Change, My America, and Crouching Tiger & Hidden Dragon challenge expectations placed on Asian Americans while exploring notions of authenticity of cultural identity and model minority stereotypes in the racial hierarchy of American society.

“Hong Seon Jang’s immigrant aesthetic is that of resistance. Engaging with the legacy of conceptual art for critical ends, he refuses to remain silent and offers both concrete and emblematic intervention toward more democratic futures. The point is not to merely dwell in Asian victimhood but to seek solidarity among the oppressed and to fight for a more equitable country,” writes Young Min Moon. 

Hong Seon Jang received his MFA from Rochester Institute of Technology, NY, and attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, ME. His honors include PS122 Studio Program, AHL-AAW Award, Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program Fellowship, Percent for Art Commission, NY, Tokyo Wonder Site Artist-In-Residence, Tokyo, Meet Factory, Prague, Czech Republic, The Jamaica Center, Artist-In-Residence, NY, EAF, Socrates Sculpture Park, NYC, Newark Museum, NJ, Museum of Arts and Design, NYC, Lower East Side Print Shop Special Editions Residency, NYC, AHL Foundation Contemporary Visual Art Awards, Bemis Center, Omaha, NE, Sculpture Space, NY. He has participated in solo and group exhibitions including TSA New York, Meet Factory, Prague, Czech Republic, Wellin Museum of Art, Clinton, NY, The Jamaica Center for Arts, NY, McColl Center, NC, Smack Mellon, NYC, Socrates Sculpture Park, NYC, the Cohen Gallery at Brown University, Providence, RI, The Soap Factory, MN, The Islip Art Museum, NY, Artspace, New Haven, CT, Rush Arts Gallery, NYC, and Hangaram Art Museum, South Korea.

AHL – AAW (Asian Art Works, Inc, founded by Cristal Kim) Solo Exhibition Grant 

established in 2023 to provide mid-career Korean artists actively working in the U.S. with opportunities for solo exhibitions and to promote outstanding contemporary Korean art to the wider community. Asian Art Works (AAW, Inc) was founded by Cristal Kim in New York in 2006 with the mission to introduce and promote Asian contemporary art and culture in the international art world.

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