173: ECHO BOX

ARTISTS
ARTWORKS

LatchKey Gallery is proud to present, ECHO BOX a group exhibition of 12 emerging artists currently pursuing their MFA at the  School of Visual Arts,  NY.  Over the course of this new year, artist, James O. Clark and Founder/Director of LKG, Amanda Uribe worked with the students to realize an exhibition and provide the business fundamentals for an artist working in this art world. ECHO BOX will be on view at LatchKey Gallery, 173 Henry Street NYC from Friday, February 10- February 26, 2023.  An opening reception will take place on February 10 from 6-8pm.

Chaos, displacement, and contemporary identities are interlaced in a group exhibition of 12 emerging artists. ECHO BOX dissects the group’s collective effort to grapple with the overstimulating era we live in. Each artist offers a glimpse into their cultural background while questioning how their unique identity interweaves with their societal experience of the present moment. The artists use the noise of our accelerating world to create space for contemplation, confrontation, and commemoration.

This group exhibition assembles a range of mediums from paintings to installations that venture into materiality and everyday shapes. Abstraction takes on many forms in this exhibition; familiar motifs are fragmented in space, and the concept of language is repurposed and pushed beyond its boundaries. In between the abstract painting and installation stands a visceral body of figurative works that taps into the female psyche and collective trauma. The multifaceted body of work echoes between past and present, eastern and western, calm and chaos.  

Despite the diverse nature of works in ECHO BOX, an evocative and cohesive conversation is exchanged between each artist’s critical response towards contemporary matters.  

Artists include Capucine Bourcart, Simon Cooper, Chukwu Chukwuemeka (EmekaCkA), Tyson Houseman, Katinka Huang, Polin Huang, Yanmei Jiang, Hyuk Kwon, Yissho Oh, Yingyao Liang, Tianshu Zhang, and Yi Xu.

ABOUT THE ARTIsTS

Capucine Bourcart  (b. 1975, Colmar, France) creates mixed media assemblages that employ a wide range of techniques, informed by her own multicultural background and the work of textile  artisans. Bourcart’s practice, although based in photography early on in her career, has expanded beyond the boundaries of the medium and includes the creation of the artist’s own alphabet and the formation of patterns, essentially creating a new language.                                   

Bourcart immigrated to the United States and has called New York, specifically Harlem her home since 2006. She grew up in Alsace (the Germanic region of Eastern France) and identifies as French with Vietnamese heritage. Her work has been exhibited internationally in numerous galleries including New York, Boston, Philadelphia, California, Colorado, Illinois, Missouri, Minnesota, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, France, and Switzerland. Her photo-based works are part of the collections of museums in France and New York. Bourcart was invited to participate in several art fairs including Art on Paper, Art Wynwood, and Flux Art Fair, and she won a Honorable Mention Award at the National Juried Exhibition titled Black & White in 2020. She was also awarded numerous grants such as Lower Manhattan Cultural Council grants, Uniqlo Park Expressions grant, and The Puffin Foundation grant. Currently, Bourcart is an MFA candidate at the School of Visual Arts (2023 May).

Simon Cooper (b.1992, Charleston, South Carolina) is an American visual artist currently based in New York City. Through paintings, collage and works on paper, Cooper’s work regularly crosses between the line of figuration and abstraction. Blending elements from across Western art history, he draws inspiration from Medieval illuminated manuscripts, Renaissance tapestries, classical antiquity, and Flemish genre painting. Cooper uses these references as a skeleton for the work, and builds upon them via cubist and abstract expressionist aesthetics.  Topics such as the Bacchanalia, mythology, the Scientific Revolution, the Age of Exploration, culinary arts, and anthropology have all been explored within his practice. Cooper views his work as a collaboration with the past, bringing historic ideas and imagery into a contemporary perspective.

Cooper graduated with a B.F.A. in Illustration and Printmaking from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2014. He is currently completing an M.F.A. in Fine Art from the School of Visual Arts. He has shown in a number of exhibitions throughout the United States as well as Spain. His works are in the collections of The City of Greenville, SC, the Sing for Hope Organization, NY, the Neighborhood Dining Group Charleston, SC, and the Savannah College of Art and Design, GA.

EmekaCkA (B. 1998, Nigeria) continuously bridges disciplines from his upbringing, critical interests of gaming, technology, culture and Architecture. He primarily Paints and makes a selective addition of complimentary media like tapes, collage with moments of them applied to 3d elements , at times, does a bit of storytelling of mini experiences. His work may be charged with and spark discussions surrounding race, housing developments and how they intersect with his reality. He envisions complimentary to the very intuitive creative processes arrived at. 

Emeka moved from Nigeria in 2016 to study architecture at Maryland Institute College of art and is currently pursuing his MFA at School of Visual Arts, NY. He has exhibited extensively throughout the United States including, Community College of Baltimore County,  a solo exhibition at Catonsville gallery I N S I D E   TH E   C A D M U S, and a solo show in Eubie Blake Cultural Center Baltimore MD. A selection of group exhibitions include,  CulturalDC and Villageoneart. Additionally, his work has been acquired by one of Baltimore’s premier law firms Gordon Feinblatt LLC. He’s been featured in a Nigerian News Publication, and Vanguard News upon the opening of his solo show at the Baltimore community college.

Tyson Houseman (b. 1990, Edmonton, Canada) is a Nehiyaw interdisciplinary artist, puppeteer, and music video director. Tyson’s video, performance, and installation practice focuses on aspects of contemporary Indigeneity, object performativity, and the interstices between live and captured time based media.

Tyson has exhibited works at Galerie OBORO in Montreal, Canada, Athens Digital Art Festival in Athens, Greece, and Asinabka Film & Media Arts Festival in Ottawa, Canada. Along with producing his own works, he is a touring puppeteer on various multimedia live video performances created by Canadian scratch DJ Kid Koala, and spends his summers working with the Bread & Puppet Theater in Glover, Vermont. Tyson has a BFA in Theatre Performance from Concordia University in Montreal and is currently an MFA in Fine Arts Candidate at School of Visual Arts in NYC.

Katinka Huang is a painter (B. 1998, Shanghai, China). Katinka’s paintings on canvas and paper are an exercise of satirical storytelling that explores the line between fiction and reality, private and public. Katinka moved to England at a young age - not with her family, but on her own. As a coping mechanism of the fear and displacement, Katinka created alter egos as the means of dissociation, which have now become the mould in which she creates. Katinka re-imagines these alter egos into stories of absurdity, she transforms a tempestuous personal diary into tales full of fantastical characters, depicting people and places as monstrous or saccharine creatures, as antagonists and protagonists. The cast of self-referential characters functions as recurring motifs which unabashedly reveals a mutilated female psyche.

Katinka has exhibited in numerous group shows both nationally and internationally, including Salon Beyond Lobotomy, Paris 2019, General Expenses, Mexico City 2022 and Lux Feminae, pop up show 2022, in Long Island City, NY. In 2019 Katinka was invited to create a mural by Chelsfield Ltd, for a retail location on Rue Marbeuf, Paris.  Katinka grew up in London, UK where she attended Central Saint Martin and studied graphic design. She later moved to Paris and earned her BFA at Paris College of Art, majoring in Fine Arts, she is currently completing her MFA at the School of Visual Arts.

Polin Huang (b. 1995, Taipei, Taiwan) is a mixed media painter based in New York City.

Huang paintings are a critique of female stereotypes, racism, and the influence of advertising media, language, and local culture. Her work considers the youth of today, who are often depressed about life or overly pursuing vague philosophies. These analyses are all told through cartoonish characters with bright colors, glittery accents and a humorous gaze.

Huang received her BFA from Taipei National University of Art and has since exhibited extensively including her first solo show, Those Moments at Qingtang Park, Taiwan, 2019 and  several group exhibitions including Take a Sea at Nan Pei gallery, Taiwan, 2016. She received second place in the  UKEAS Art and Design competition in 2020. She is currently an MFA candidate at The  School of Visual Art, NY.

Yanmei Jiang’s (B. 1986, Guangzhou China) primary practice was photography before coming to New York. Jiang’s current body of works, painting and texts, re-explore and re-constructs herself after experiencing fear and oppression from her intimate relationships. Caused by the patriarchal society in China, such as a daughter to a father, and a woman to a man, she looks to analyze if masculine part of her is from men or herself.

Jiang’s previous photography project, Me and Me, self-portraits about exploring one’s self in an intimate relationship, was awarded The Taipei Photo Emerging Talent Awards in Taiwan China, the Dummy Award Kassel shortlist in Germany, and Xitek EOS New Talent Award in China. Me and Me was also collected by the German foundation, Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung, and Chengdu Contemporary Image Museum. Yanmei has exhibited in group shows and solo shows in China, London, Germany, France, Korea and so on. She is currently a candidate for the MFA program at the School of Visual Arts in NYC, practicing painting, sculpture, and installation. 

Sunghyuk Kown (B. 1989, Salt Lake City, Utah) is an installation, sculpture artist whose work, through materiality, examines the subtle social hierarchies of our contemporary society. It is through these examinations that Kown brings to light these issues and our resistance to them.

 Kown majored in architecture at Kookmin University in South Korea and has participated consecutively in the ‘Young Creative Korea’ Exhibition held in Seoul, South Korea both in 2018 and 2019.  He also participated in an ‘firefly’ Exhibition held in Leesu gallery, Seoul,South Korea.

He is currently pursuing his MFA at the School of Visual Arts.

Yissho Oh (b. 1992, Seoul, Korea) is a painter and tattoo artist who lives and works in New York. His practice is to create his own visual vocabulary through performative drawing. Using Silicone, burlap and tattoo instruments, his formed surfaces are similar to skin, each unique in tone, texture and density. 

Influenced by a wide variety of Eastern and Western Art, from Irezumi, Ukiyo-e woodprints in the Edo period of Japan to action painting/Abstract Expressionism, Oh’s images are ambiguous, evolving from intuition, memories, and emotions.

Yissho had his first solo exhibition, The Soil Sinks into the Water, at BHAK, Seoul, South Korea in 2021 and participated in Art Miami that same year. His work has also been included in numerous exhibitions including, Too Much Love Will Kill You, at Subtitled NYC, Brooklyn, New York in 2022. He has a BFA in Fine Arts and BA in Philosophy from Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul and is currently an MFA candidate at School of Visual Arts, New York.

Yingyao Liang (b.1997, CITY China) is a multi-media artist and painter. She investigates the Ego and the ID, specifically, exploring the theme of liberty and choice among people. She discusses the question of identity via multi-media artworks, such as photography, installation, and performance. Her current body of work looks to combine Chinese traditional art and Western art in her paintings by reinterpreting the stories which affect her in her childhood. The first ongoing project is about the ‘Alice in Wonderland” story.

Yingyao received her BFA in Fine Art Education with an emphasis on traditional Chinese painting from the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in 2019, her work Miss Strangelove was shown in the Guangdong Museum of Art and won the outstanding graduation project scholarship in the same year.  She is currently pursuing her MFA in Fine Arts program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

Tianshu Zhang (B. 1994, Shandong, China) straddles a nebulous boundary between abstraction and figuration, offering her perspective of the ways we move though the world. She translates images from our everyday life into ambiguous shapes and fantastical spaces. Tianshu is drawn to work about her own experiences of the world, the fact that she had moved from place to place during her childhood, brings the sense of distance and mystery in all her works. Figures in her paintings are always fading into the background or become incomplete, with her very limited choice of color, most of her works exude a similar atmosphere and emotion.

Tianshu moved from China to The United States at the age of 15. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from The University of Texas at Austin in 2017 and came to New York to obtain her master’s degree in fine arts at the School of Visual Arts in 2021.   

Yi Xu (b.1995, Hangzhou, China) is a multi-disciplinary artist currently living and working in New York City.  Growing up in a traditional Chinese household and living in the U.S. independently for over seven years, Yi’s identity as a female and the cultural complexity experience, contributed to her questioning and confronting body shame and the highly charged male gaze. Yi explores sensuality, sexuality, femininity, and feminism in her artworks to reflect the societal issues corresponding to gender and power. 

Yi plays the role of “gazer” to her own body, engaging with sensuality, emotions and fantasy.  By utilizing expressive mark-making, bright colors, and double images, she embarks in a world seeking both the personal and historical origin of women.                     

Yi earned her BFA in Painting and History of Art from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2019, and is now pursuing her MFA at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

ARTWORKS