ANNETTE HUR’S WILLFUL UNKNOWING IS A TRIUMPH OVER TRAUMA. THE IMAGES IN HER WORKS ARE INTUITIVE, FROM MEMORIES THAT IMPRINT A KIND OF BODY KNOWLEDGE FOR THE ARTIST. HER PAINTINGS CREATE STORIES THAT EXIST SOLELY ON AN EMOTIONAL LEVEL BUT THAT FEEL MORE REAL THAN REALITY.
The metaphorical use of insects, animals, and nature delves into the expressive power of the simplest apparatus of a living human body: instinct, intuition, fear, survival.
Hur demonstrates this with hyper color-filled large-scale oil paintings that flex between abstract and recognizable forms, such as a falling rabbit, flowers, butterflies or an ominous dark cloud. The surface vibrates frenzied energy which demands the eye to crawl over every inch, as if going through all the details of a certain event. She commands time with these works, speeding up between fast fluid fields of color and halting to a stop with determined delineating marks as if drawing a line in the sand.
These works are large enough to consume your full view, then the images break down as the fine patched details draw you in, devouring your first perception while leaving you to sort this myriad of puzzled parts. The body is either camouflaged or shredded into the background evoking a sense of crisis and precarious transitional time. It is volatile with an effort to be active over things in which it could not be before. These paintings engage in an internal dialogue with the body’s desire to reveal and unfold perpetual stories of the competing imperatives that we carry as a living body: vulnerability and fear.
BIO
Annette Hur was born in South Korea and currently lives and works in Brooklyn. Recent exhibitions include solo/group exhibitions at Assembly Room, Wallach Gallery, Gavin Brown Enterprise, RegularNormal, Urban Zen, Times Square Space, 33 Orchard gallery in New York; Fairleigh Dickenson University in New Jersey; Heaven Gallery, Chicago Artists Coalition, Boundary in Chicago. Hur’s work was featured in Friend of The Artist Volume 11, Create! Magazine issue 13, New American Paintings issues 134 & 135, the online art publications: Bad at Sports and Third Coast Review, the online news: Naeil News, The preview, Sisa today. Hur was a nominee for Rema Hor Mann Grant in 2019, a resident of BOLT Residency at Chicago Artists Coalition in 2016-2017. Hur holds a BA from Ewha Women's University(2008), BFA(2015) from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and MFA(2019) from Columbia University.
