Contemplastic

Artist list

Wan Hee Cho, Sooyeon Kim, Yong Joo Kim, Joo Hyung Park

The title, Contemplastic, is a word newly created for this exhibition by combining the word Contemplation and Plastic..
When we create our art work as jewelry artists, we must be able to make firm decisions based on our philosophy. In addition, we must also be able to digest outside input with an open mind and be flexible enough to let them develop and grow our decisions. During this process, we not only face conflicts of the subjective kind — such as deciding what concepts we want to express, where on the body should the finished work be located, and what the finished form should look like — , but also of the inter-subjective kind — such as ensuring the work is comfortable enough to be worn and that our work communicates and dialogues with the current discourse of our society, culture, the field of art, craft, and contemporary jewelry.
By curating this exhibition, we, the 4 participating artists, hope to share the experience we had while navigating the above conflicts and concerns. Our intent is to facilitate greater intimacy between ourselves and our audience.
After we were selected for the 5th Baum gallery art jewelry competition, we regularly engaged in conversations around a variety of subject matters. By publicly sharing the documentation of these conversations, we hope to facilitate an opportunity for the audience to empathize within an aspect which would normally be inaccessible by mere observation of the final art form. We also hope that our personal, social, and cultural points of views will contribute, however minutely, to lessening the gap between the artwork and the viewer as well as between the artist and the viewer.