Opening Reception: May. 5th, 2022 , 3pm - 8 pm
Location: 64A Bayard Street, New York, NY 10013
Artists: Jessica Wee
As the summer steps into New York, LATITUDE Gallery warmly welcomes you to Jessica Wee’s first solo exhibit in New York: Plusieurs rêves. This exhibition includes a collection of Jessica’s 12 recent paintings that are mainly inspired by her experiences living in New York from 2017 to 2020. The exhibition will be on view from May 7th till June 12th, and the eponymous Artsy online showroom will be on view till the end of July.
As a diasporic Asian artist of Korean origin who has lived in Canada, France, Italy, and the U.S., Jessica has always had a complex relationship with the notion of cultural identity. Yet, her discontinued sense of “homeland” and disorientation from the clashing cultures have given her an unexpected gift, her own ways of carpe diem. As a ramification of her diasporic experience, she creates worlds consisting of different cultures and identities fragmented memories and identities where she inhabits multiple characters and places all at once.
Jessica spent four years studying Old Master’s technique in Italy where the training exposed her to western art historical elements. In her recent works, Jessica introduced elements from Greco-Roman and Renaissance in a surrealist dreamscape, forming these hybrid creatures with the free-flowing patterns and creatures from Korean folklore. Working with an expanded archive of images found both in life and online, Jessica used CGI modeling to lend a sheen of realism to enigmatic compositions of multilayered pastiche, suspended somewhere between touchscreens and dreams.
The selected works in this exhibition are inspired by Jessica's experience living in New York from 2017 to 2020. Growing up in Paris and Montreal, Jessica made her first Korean friend, Seulgi, in Brooklyn in her late 20s. Coincidentally in parallel to one of the current Korean feminist manifestos: women supporting women[1], Jessica’s sisterhood with Seulgi ended up being Jessica’s bolster even way after their original acquaintance. During the uncertain times, this precious but strong sisterhood supported and fueled Jessica turning her traumatic experiences of the pandemic into a crucial aspect of her pieces. According to Jessica, little things – like the solitary bathing rituals and face masks, drinking beers and joking, cooking “Jjapaguri” with steak after watching Parasite, and listening to Korean psych music – formed the sisterhood that still entices her to this day. The pieces were created after Jessica was forced to leave Brooklyn as not only a tribute to her memories of New York – the normal but joyful life she lived with Seulgi and that she couldn’t have anymore – but also a souvenir of her cultural awakening that she gleaned from her past happiness.
Being part of the minority-female-run LATITUDE Gallery, our curatorial team hopes to invite you on a nuanced and whimsical journey about Jessica’s precious memory. As Jessica explores the complexity and fluidity of cultural identity through both creating a hybrid content and experimenting with a hybrid material in her recent work series Hanji, we aim to puzzle together the charming little moments to plusieurs rêves (many dreams) that she depicted onto the crafted canvas.
Upcoming exhibitions at LATITUDE Gallery include the solo exhibition by Yanyan Huang, and NFT online group show collaborating with Asian Creative Collection.
Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 12 pm to 6 pm, Sunday from 1pm to 5 pm. For press inquiries please contact press@latitudegallerynyc.com, (+1) 312 508 2615. For other inquiries please contact the gallery at info@latitudegallerynyc.com.
[1]Jung, Kyungja. Practising Feminism in South Korea: The Women's Movement against Sexual Violence. Routledge, 2017
Single K-sisters drinking beers
Oil on canvas
24 x 24 inches
2021
Oil on canvas
24 x 24 inches
2021
Growing up in Paris and Montreal, I only made my first Korean friend, Seulgi, in Brooklyn in my late 20s. This painting reflects on our home life—drinking beers, joking, sharing stories—and how our sisterhood awakened my sense of Korean-ness.
Wash wash wash
Oil on canvas
24 x 24 inches
2020
Oil on canvas
24 x 24 inches
2020
After leaving Brooklyn during the pandemic, I envisioned this ambiguous woman sharing in the intimate, solitary bathing rituals Seulgi and I bonded over.
Praesagium
Oil on canvas
24 x 24 inches
2021
Oil on canvas
24 x 24 inches
2021
As she reads the news on her iPad at home in Brooklyn, Seulgi is surrounded by symbols of fortune, good energy and luck, both familiar and exotic. Despite their positive aura, these objects are ambivalent to the impending trauma of the pandemic.
I told you so
Oil on canvas
24 x 24 inches
2022
Oil on canvas
24 x 24 inches
2022
This is the 4th painting in a series. This piece depicts a moment I remember very strongly, when my friend Iris told me that if I went to Montreal for a weekend the borders might close. And she was right. But I was too busy on my phone to pay attention to the signs around me. On the wall behind me is a traditional Korean folkloric mask Hahoetal, a unique dichotomous symbol, embodying the significance of tradition while allowing the wearer to realize full self-expression and liberation. I used to represent the moon, glowing like the neon lights in a psychic shop.
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Me+Seu
Oil on canvas
40 x 30 inches
2022
Me+Seu
Oil on canvas
40 x 30 inches
2022
| This is me and Seulgi. The composition, of the same person repeated, was inspired by Magritte’s “Portrait of Paul Nougé.” It reflects my desire to paint Seulgi and is reminiscent of the repetition of her in my paintings and how my depictions of us often overlap. |
Luck
Oil on canvas
12 x 14 inches
2022
Oil on canvas
12 x 14 inches
2022
In these uncertain times, I’ve continued to be interested in representing symbols of fortune, good energy, and luck. This is Seu and I in a game of hide and seek. A stream of blue comes out of one of the figure’s heads, and reaches for a pixelized four-leaf clover.
May this year be filled of paintings n.3
Oil on mulberry paper
16 x 12 inches
2022
Oil on mulberry paper
16 x 12 inches
2022
This piece imagines the iconic Maneki-neko fortune cat in an extraterrestrial landscape, a psychedelic scenario also evoking Alice in Wonderland’s Cheshire Cat. A painter’s palette in hand, the cat represents my wish to develop my artistic practice.