New Town Ghost (2005) is one of Lim’s trio of large-scale video installations. (The other two are S. O. S—Adoptive Dissensus [2009] and The Weight of Hands [2010].) The series grew out of her interest in capturing lost memories and the collective unconscious in rapidly globalizing cities such as Seoul. New Town Ghost documents a young female activist who is standing aggressively on a truck, rapping slam poetry through a megaphone to the rhythm of a nearby drummer. The two performers are from the Yeongdeungpo district, which has been drastically transformed by development from an industrial zone into a “new town” full of giant department stores and mega-brands. Yeongdeungpo is symbolic of many transformations witnessed by a young generation of Koreans. For Lim it is a dystopian place where the idea of a better future is simply delusional. The poem, talking about the new malls, the skyscrapers derides not only neoliberalism but also the indifferent citizens who have apparently sold their souls to it.
Loss, grief, trauma, death, and memory are consistent themes that Minouk Lim addresses through her sculptures, installations, performances, and videos. Lim’s provocative body of work is a response to and reconciliation of traumatic historical events in Korea from the late 1940s to the present day, including the undocumented massacres that occurred during the Korean War of the late 1940s and 50s, the protest for workers rights in the 1970s during the economic expansion of South Korea, and the ever-present fear of nuclear obliteration that clouds the entire Korean peninsula. For Lim, the collective experience is personal and her research confronts forgotten pasts and unlawful persecutions and in many instances, involves direct contact and establishing meaningful relationships with victims of torture, wrongfully accused North Korean spies, and civil rights organization employees.
The Possibility of the Half by Minouk Lim is a two-channel video projection that begins with a mirror image of a weeping woman kneeling on the ground...
While Untitled (Shuffle) presents the same formal characteristics as the rest of Berman’s verifax collages, this constellation of specific images inside the radio’s frames—the Star of David, Hebrew characters, biblical animals—have Jewish symbolism and attest to the artist’s lasting obsession with the kabala...
Untitled (San Francisco) was made in Idaho in 1984 and was facetiously dedicated to Henry Hopkins, the then director of the San Francisco Museum of Art who added “modern” to its name...
Open Mind is a model created by Capote for a traversable public maze that, when seen from above, resembles the human brain...
In 1977, as an already-established artist best known for his films, Bruce Conner began to photograph punk rock shows at Mabuhay Gardens, a San Francisco club and music venue...
Sign #1 , Sign #2 , Sign #3 were included in “Found Object Assembly”, Copeland’s 2009 solo show at Jack Hanley Gallery, San Francisco...
The Illusion of Everything (2014) follows an unseen pedestrian as he navigates the Australian city of Melbourne’s dense and intricate network of laneways...
The Crime of Art is an animation by Kota Ezawa that appropriates scenes from various popular Hollywood films featuring the theft of artworks: a Monet painting in The Thomas Crown Affair (1999), a Rembrandt in Entrapment (1999), a Cellini in How to Steal a Million (1966), and an emerald encrusted dagger in Topkapi (1964)...
San Pedro is a seaside city, part of the Los Angeles Harbor, sitting on the edge of a channel...
Miljohn Ruperto’s research-based multidisciplinary practice often deals with possession, re-enactment, mythology and archives...
Justice (2014) presents viewers with a curious assemblage: a wooden gallows with slightly curved spindles protruding from the topmost plank, which in turn is covered with rudimentary netting, the threads slackly dangling like a loose spider’s web or an rib cage that’s been cracked open...
The application of bright colors and kitsch materials in Flower Tree manifests a playful comment on the influence of popular culture and urban lifestyle...
Visalia Livestock Market, Visalia, California results from Lockhart’s prolonged investigation of an agricultural center and community...
Acting Exercise: Demon Possession is a video by Miljohn Ruperto that addresses notions of performativity, the self, and collective truth...
Telescopic Pole is an adjustable telescopic pole that extends vertically from floor to ceiling and is held up by its own internal pressure...
Unlike many of his earlier films which often present poignant critiques of mass media and its deleterious effects on American culture, EASTER MORNING , Conner’s final video work before his death in 2008, constitutes a far more meditative filmic essay in which a limited amount of images turn into compelling, almost hypnotic visual experience...