The Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw once said, “Youth is wasted on the young” and as another television season of Jersey Shore begins, I’m beginning to agree with this statement. However, artist Ming Ying Hong is putting her youth to good work in her first solo exhibition at the Green Building Gallery in Louisville.
Hong is a recent BFA Drawing and Painting graduate of the University of Kentucky where she spent time perfecting her craft and experimenting with large-scale installations. Hong’s work trumps the familiar two-dimensional drawing format with her use of folds, three-dimensional layers and works that come to life with the help of video. She states, “For the show, I was driven to make work that pushes the traditional notions of drawing by incorporating sculptural elements and new media. Furthermore, the exhibition contains pieces that are purely abstract, purely representational, and somewhere-in-between in order to broaden the idea of drawing.”
Hong uses herself as a drawing model in most of her pieces because “it’s one of the easiest resources I have.” The exhibition and all of the pieces, with the exception of one, are purposely left untitled because she has “an impetus towards immediate responses, which I believe titles may inhibit.” Cleary, Hong can draw and draw well, but her perceptive sense of mystery and dark beauty that she captures is what propels it forward. Ming Ying Hong is an emerging artist that will be worth following into maturity.
This exhibit is also the first for Daniel Pfalzgraf who serves as the newly appointed Director to the Green Building Gallery. Pfalzgraf is a mixed-media artist that has been exhibiting his work for twelve years and has worked at The Bill Lowe Gallery in Atlanta, GA, and at The Speed Art Museum and B. Deemer Gallery, both in Louisville, KY. Hosting Ming Ying Hong’s debut exhibit at the Green Building Gallery is proof that Pfalzgraf is serious about his new position in the NuLu district.
Ming Ying Hong’s exhibit is on view through February 25, 2012. The Green Building Gallery hours are 10-5 Mon-Sat. Find more of Hong’s work at mingyinghong.com.
