Foley Gallery is pleased to present Utopia, a solo exhibition featuring a selection of photographs and sculpture by artist Ina Jang. This is Jang’s second solo exhibition with the gallery.
The work in Utopia is inspired from imagery found on popular Japanese magazine websites. The images are alluring, depicting young women in suggestive poses, inviting a viewer to gaze and admire, to long for contact...and perhaps, stay on the page.
Jang’s photographs depict silhouettes of these girls preserving only their suggestive postures, shape and luxurious hair. Gradients of candy colors surround and bathe the figures, while the figures themselves drop their distinguishing features and take on a sublime pastel hue.
What Jang uncovers is a flat, one-dimensional fantasy represented only by her thin paper silhouettes and the promise of intimacy never kept. These anonymous figures question the stereotypes associated with their original premise. By using bright colors and digital collage, Jang blends themes of feminine identity and fashion. She describes her work as “playful, light-hearted and dreamy.”
Her sculptures take this one step further by combining select features in rounded shapes piled atop one another. They become primitive representations of the figure, appearing flat and three-dimensional at the same moment.
Jang was born in South Korea in 1982 and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Past solo exhibitions include the Museum of Fine Arts in Le Locle, Switzerland, Christophe Guye Galerie in Zurich, Switzerland, Empty Quarter in Dubai, the New York Photo Festival and Humble Arts Foundation.
Jang’s work has been published in The New York Times Magazine, Dear Dave Magazine, the British Journal of Photography, and Foam International Photography Magazine.
Utopia is on view through May 13th, 2018. Foley Gallery is open Wednesday through Saturday, 11 – 5:30pm and Sunday from 12-5pm. To request images; please contact the gallery at info@foleygallery.com.