한인 조각가 곽영준씨가 맨해튼 소호의 레슬리-로만미술관(LLMA, Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art)에서 개인전 '다시 자매애(Young Joon Kwak: RESISTERHOOD)'을 열고 있다. 몸과 관계를 주제로 해체, 재조립, 그리고 장식의 과정을 거쳐 시간 속에 멈춰있는 젊음, 노화, 잉태, 성전환의 신체를 보여준다. 곽씨의 작품은 유희적인 에로티즘, 불완전함, 혐오, 모호함, 존재방식을 탐구한다. 1984년 퀸즈에서 태어난 곽영준 작가는 시카고아트인스티튜트 졸업 후 시카고대와 남가주대(USC)에서 석사학위를 받았다. 곽영준 작가는 2022년 네덜란드 입양 한인작가 장세진(사라 반 데르 하이드)씨와 서울 아르코미술관에서 '올 어바웃 러브: 곽영준 & 장세진'을 열었다. 

https://www.youngjoon.com

 

레슬리로만미술관은 1987년 미술품을 수집해온 찰스 W. 레슬리(Charles W. Leslie, 명예관장)와 J. 프레데릭 "프리츠"로만(J. Frederic “Fritz” Lohman, 1922-2009)이 설립한 재단으로 시작해 2011년 미술관으로 등록됐다. 이 미술관은 주로 LGBTQ 예술가들의 작품 1천300여점을 소장하고 있다. 소장 작가들은 베레니스 애벗, 아벨 아즈코나, 데이비드 호크니, 잉고 스완, 캐서린 오피, 앤디 워홀, 톰 오브 핀란드, 델마스 하우, 장 콕토, 데이비드 보이나로비츠, 로버트 매플소프, 조지 플랫 라인스, 호르스트, 던컨 그랜트, 제임스 비드굿, 듀안 미칼스, 찰스 데무스, 돈 바샤르디, 아틸라 리하르 루카치, 짐 프렌치, 델 라그레이스 볼케이노, 폴 텍, 피터 후자르, 아서 트레스, 올라프 외데가르 등이다. https://leslielohman.org  

 

*곽영준, 레이첼 연 등 '자연의 퀴어성' 그룹전 'Perfect Trouble: Queering Natureculture' @웨이브힐, 2014

https://www.nyculturebeat.com/?mid=Lounge2&document_srl=4127566

 

*33 Keys to Understanding the Korean Wave 

#27 K-Adoptees Sparkle in Culture

https://www.nyculturebeat.com/?mid=Zoom&document_srl=4118477

 

 

Young Joon Kwak: RESISTERHOOD

 

Feb 14, 2025 - Jul 27, 2025

Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art (26 Wooster St. NYC) 

 

Installation view, Young Joon Kwak: RESISTERHOOD, photo by Daniel Terna.

 

Young Joon Kwak's work begins with touch. Molds and imprints of bodies - the artist's own, and those of friends, loved ones, and collaborators - are dis- and re-assembled, burnished and jeweled. The resulting works bear intimate human traces and yet remain anonymous, moving in and out of recognition. They shimmer in their distortions and imperfections, presenting us with bodies both frozen in time and in perpetual transition: in the midst of youth, aging, gestation, or gender transformation.

 

RESISTERHOOD includes new commissions and works made over the past ten years, a series of neon sculptures for the Museum's public window gallery, and a soundscape composed by Xina Xurner (Kwak and Marvin Astorga) with Johanna Hedva, Anna Luisa, and Dorian Wood. Taken together, these artworks are a mobilizing call for a new politics of queer and trans resistance: embracing a playful erotics, and celebrating imperfection, abjection, ambiguity, and uncategorizable ways of looking and being. 

 

Young Joon Kwak (b. 1984, Queens, New York; lives and works in Los Angeles) received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007, an MA from the University of Chicago in 2010, and an MFA from the University of Southern California in 2014. They are the founder of Mutant Salon, a queer-transfem-BIPOC collective beauty salon and collaborative art and performance platform. They are also the lead performer of the drag-electronic-dance-noise band Xina Xurner. Their work has been widely exhibited at galleries and museums internationally, including at the Hammer Museum’s biennial exhibition Made in L.A. 2023: Acts of Living. Their solo exhibition, Resistance Pleasure, was recently on view at the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (2024). Kwak is a recipient of the Trellis Art Fund grant (2024); Artadia Los Angeles Award (2024), California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists (2022), Korean Arts Foundation of America Award (2020), Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant (2018), Artist Community Engagement Grant (2016), and Art Matters Foundation Grant (2016). Their work is in the collections of Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento; Dallas Museum of Art; MSU Broad Art Museum, East Lansing; and Speed Art Museum, Louisville.

 

Curated by Stamatina Gregory, Head Curator / Director of Exhibitions and Collections

https://leslielohman.org