Los Angeles, CA - PRJCTLA is pleased to present Los Angeles-based artist Jae Hwa Yoo in the gallery’s first solo exhibition with the artist.

Yoo’s practice reveals a long standing focus and commitment to a practice of mark making reminiscent of the renowned Korean Abstractionist movement “Dansaekhwa”, and she is closely associated with that group. Educated in Korea during the late 60’s, she was identified with and knew most of the artists from the “Dansaekhwa” 

movement, such as Ha Chonghyun, Eun Hyong-Keun and preeminently Park Seo Bo, the acknowledged godfather of that group and the artist Yoo regards as probably her most important influence.  

Unfortunately, Yoo emerged during a time when there was very little focus on female artists in Korea. She then moved to Los Angeles where she experienced other difficulties as an immigrant merging into a new scene. What however is most important is the artwork itself and this is where Yoo excels most.

Her works are powerful yet subtle and demonstrate a mastery in painting which has taken her a lifetime to develop. Her works are a progression of decades of art making culminating in inspiring paintings that are fresh and yet imbed a history of experience.  

Yoo has said that she has been guided and motivated by memories of the layered palimpsest calligraphy studies of her youth. Her paintings are often done on unstretched canvas where she places hundreds to thousands of marks which combine   assertive as well as delicate, vestigial touches that form subtle patterns across the surface. The patterns create beautiful, quietly mesmerizing rhythms which are almost musical and akin to minimalist compositions of Terry Riley. Recently her markings have lengthened and become more linear which, again, she says is related to her early regular brush practice sessions.

One of the readiest characteristics of Jae Hwa Yoo’s art has been its rugged informality. She has covered canvases with marks, scuffs, small notations and other visual (and occasionally actual) detritus and then, in her large works at least, has hung them up unstretched or even plopped them down on the floor like worn, abandoned blankets.

Yoo has also created large painting installations in which seemingly compulsive yet meticulous and meditative marks and erasures reveal - often through dense networks of simultaneous effacement and affirmation - an abundant wholeness and presence residing in apparent emptiness.