Hee K. Bae (Korea)

11 March- 11 June

Hee K. Bae is a contemporary painter from Korea. She was awarded an Arts Centre residency whilst in residence at the National Museum of Contemporary Art’s Goyang Studio on the outskirts of Seoul.

Hee completed her MFA at the San Francisco Art Institute in 2007 and has taught at Korea University, most recently teaching digital drawing. She has exhibited in Korea, Germany and the USA. Her art practice relies heavily upon the internet, which she uses to obtain images, which are then printed. These prints become the canvas upon which Hee then paints. Her art practice is heavily rooted in process, each artwork comprising multiple layers of paint.

Hee’s residency at the Arts Centre was the overseas component of the Arts Centre/Asia New Zealand Foundation Arts Residency Exchange for 2010. Christchurch-based contemporary sculptor, Scott Flanagan travelled to Korea as the New Zealand recipient of this arts exchange.

Passage_2009_installation_view_2009_Universal_Cube_Leipzig_GermanyA

'Hazy, lazy, easy, breezy', 2009. Pencil, pastel on paper, 500x 401mm.

Silent March

Observatory Art Room and Botany project space, South Quad
26 May- 6 June

Korean painter, Hee K. Bae, the overseas 2010 recipient of the Arts Centre/Asia New Zealand Foundation Arts Residency Exchange will present her artwork for two weeks at the end of this month.

Silent March, marks the conclusion of Bae’s 3-month residency at the Arts Centre and will be presented in the Observatory Art Room in the Observatory Building and her studio-cum-project space in the adjoining Botany Building in the Arts Centre’s South Quadrangle from 26 May- 6 June. It will be open from 11am-5pm daily, excluding Mondays.

Painter Bae, uses digital prints of images obtained from the internet that are a mixture of real places, online characters or the artist herself online, using Skype. She then paints upon these images. One of her residency works uses an image of the iconic Christchurch cathedral, taken from a New Zealand tourist’s video posted on You Tube which Bae watched over the internet, in Korea.

Bae’s paintings and video works are an exploration of identity and distance in our contemporary, internet-savvy world. After collapsing time and space using the internet to obtain her ‘canvas’ of Cathedral Square, Bae is now working upon the image, passing through the ‘real’ square in her daily travels. Bae’s paintings are a response to her contemporary life in which internet access is a given.  Her artworks explore the feeling of dislocation that comes from being distanced from other people and places and then interacting with those people and places, via a computer monitor.

Bae’s process involves dripping, slashing and flicking acrylic paint onto the surface of these digital images. Once dry, she peels the paint away and paints over the residue with small brushstrokes. As this process is repeated, the photographic image beneath the paint becomes increasingly obscured, resulting in tension between the depth of the photographic image and the flatness of the paint on the surface.

Christchurch’s Scott Flanagan- the New Zealand recipient of the exchange- is now in Seoul, where he has taken up residence at the National Museum of Contemporary Art’s Goyang Studio in place of Bae. Flanagan and Bae met briefly pre-residency in Christchurch and will meet once again on 9 June, post-residency to discuss and compare their experiences in each other’s countries. That evening, a celebratory event involving both artists and members of the arts community and wider public will be held at the Arts Centre. Both Bae and Flanagan will speak about their residency experiences and answer questions from the audience. Later this year, Scott Flanagan will present a component of work produced as a result of his Seoul residency, at the Arts Centre.

For more information, contact: Coralie Winn, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it