Category: Press

The Next Web, Hong Seon Jang, David B. Smith Gallery

This Artist Made a City Out of Movable Type
The Next Web, Harrison Weber
May 16, 2012

“Type City, a “metropolis created from moveable type” as NOTCOT calls it, was built by NY-based artist Hong Seon Jang. As you can see in the images below, the feat shows a true love for art, architecture and typography, with quite spectacular results.

Modern moveable type consists of independent characters and ligatures, which from there are assembled into words and then lines of text with a composing stick. Then, everything is bound together into a page image known as a forme.

Yes, computers are wonderful and make this entire process wildly easier — but there is something special about the results that come from a proper letterpress.”

Inhabitat, Hong Seon Jang, David B. Smith Gallery

Artist Creates Epic Cityscapes Using Vintage Letterpress Pieces
Inhabitat, Lori Zimmer
May 16, 2012

“From afar, Hong Seon Jang’s sculptural cityscapes look like models from a city planner’s office. But upon closer inspection, we can see that eachrising building and skyscraper is capped with a letter of the alphabet! The mini metropolises are in fact meticulously arranged conglomerations of disused typesets.

Jang’s Type City is part of a solo show of the artist’s work at David B. Smith Gallery in Denver, Colorado. The letterpress and wood sculpture stretches just two feet by 11 inches, but rises to 14 inches.  Despite the small volume, a massive amount of tinydisused metal pieces were used to build up the incredible relief.

Type City offers a birds-eye view of a city by the sea. Jang has used the letterpress pieces to create the city’s shoreline, complete with long docks that jut into the water. Grids of streets and low apartment buildings and business are made from small pieces, or longer ones places horizontally. Clusters of skyscrapers spring up in the “downtown” area near the water’s edge. The longer pieces stand up vertically, and the raised letters on their roofs give away their former use.

Type City’s incredible detail harkens the era of miniaturists, which coincidentally are related to the era when letterpresses were commonly used to print newspapers, books and other reading materials. Jang ironically uses the remnants from an obsolete vintage process to create the sprawling metropolis of modern times.”

Colossal, Hong Seon Jang, David B. Smith Gallery

A Miniature City Built with Metal Typography
Colossal, Christopher Jobson
May 14, 2012

“Type City is a recent artwork by artist Hong Seon Jang that uses pieces of movable type from a printing press to create an elaborate cityscape. It’s fascinating to watch as the need for printed books and typography wanes, the unused objects themselves are more frequently used as an actual medium….”

TREND HUNTER, Hong Seon Jang at David B. Smith Gallery

Transformative Art Installations:
The Hong Seon Jang Labyrinth Exhibition Alters Mundane Materials
TREND HUNTER, Sarah Moore
May 6, 2012

“The Hong Seon Jang’s Labyrinth exhibition at the David B. Smith Gallery in Denver, Colorado, showcases two unique collections curated specifically for the show, as well as a selection of his other work.

The New York-based artist traditionally forgoes the use of the usual artist’s materials of choice in favor of reworking mundane, man-made objects.

The ‘Black Forest’ collection, which Jang created as part of the exhibition, features multiple layers of overlapping, translucent tape pasted onto a black chalkboard. He makes another interesting material choice in his ‘Black Ruin’ project, which is also part of his solo show. By gingerly placing hot glue across a canvas, the artist adds flair to his work. Both of these projects fuse man with nature through the use of non-natural materials used to convey the environment which the artist is inspired by.”

DBSG, Hong Seon Jang, designboom

Hong Seon Jang: “Labyrinth” at David B. Smith Gallery
designboom, leigh db
May 3, 2012

“designboom has received an exclusive sneak peak of new york city-based artist hong seon jang’s upcoming solo show at david b. smith gallery in denver, colorado, USA. the exhibition is an assemblage of jang’s mixed-media sculptures and includes his tape drawings, decorated thread sculptures  and a miniature cityscape formed from letterpress pieces. the artist’s elaborate installations transform every-day objects into actualizations that evoke  both natural and man-made scenes.

in his tape drawing ‘black forest’, jang layers a typically transparent item until a ghostly wooded alcove is manifested upon a black chalkboard. with ‘black mirage’, the artist uses clear string, zig-zagging across the gallery space, to create the framework for darkened hot glue to adhere to. the effect is something like a man-made moss, growing upon the walls of the installation. again in ‘type city’, the artist re-imagines mass-produced materials, playing with the objects’ initial forms in order to create a whimsical, diminutive metropolis reminiscent of his new york city home.”

Hong Seon Jang Feature, Modern in Denver

 

We are pleased to announce an in-depth feature of Hong Seon Jang in the Spring 2012 issue of Modern In Denver magazine. The piece chronicles aspects of Jang’s practice and covers many of his most ambitious works to date. This feature sets the stage for his upcoming exhibition at David B. Smith Gallery, which will include a new series of Jang’s acclaimed tape drawings and mixed-media sculptural works. In addition, the artist will be in residence at the gallery for a week completing two largescale site-specific installations. This exhibition of new works will open May 4th, 2012.

The article can be read in its entirety by visiting the Modern in Denver website.

Christina Empedocles, Denver Post

In The Denver Post, Ray Mark Rinaldi states, “The David B. Smith Gallery is on a roll, and its new show features the drawings of Christina Empedocles, who makes odd and evocative works with wax pencils. Empedocles’ subject matter crosses a lot of lines, from pop culture movie posters to natural subjects like birds and zebras. But she brings it all together with the consistent precision of her renderings and her own personal twist. She crinkles, tears and cuts out in a way that makes you rethink the time and place where familiar objects exist….”

Liz Miller, art ltd. Magazine review

Liz Miller: “Recalcitrant Mimesis” at David B. Smith Gallery
art ltd. Magazine, Michael Paglia
March/April 2012, p. 31

 

“….To celebrate its opening,the Clyfford Still Museum partnered with select regional museums and galleries to present shows that pay homage to Still. Most of these exhibits focus on abstract painting, which makes Liz Miller’s “Recalcitrant Mimesis” at the David B. Smith Gallery the most unusual of the lot in that it’s anchored by a spectacular and monumental installation….”

 

Oliver Vernon, Huffington Post

Oliver Vernon ‘Tilts’ Our Perceptions
Via Huffington Post:

“The two extremes of artistic vision can create a vacuous, polarizing effect. Though gray areas abound, the push-and-pull between depicting reality and praying at the alter of the abstract are still prevalent today.

To find a middle ground within a traditional medium such as painting takes an admirable effort to say the least, but some are up for a challenge.Oliver Vernon’s new show, “Tilt,” at David B. Smith Gallery asks us to let go of our need to make sense of what we see and be content to immerse ourselves in his surreal, imaginative world.

Vernon’s new large-scale works lull the viewer into a false sense of security with a harmonious palette that spans the natural world and other realities, but the content is a bewildering jumble of concentric circles, fans, and oozing rivers. Bucolic scenes collide with futuristic worlds more chaotic than our own in these new landscapes.

Vernon goes beyond mere touches of surrealism by traveling through several vocabularies of the weird and unexpected. Geometric forms give way to fluid swirls of color, which then flow back into the familiar. Vernon’s “Tilt” destroys what we know only to hold our hand through the reconstruction.

Oliver Vernon’s “Tilt” will be on display at David B. Smith Gallery until March 24, 2012.”