October 5 – November 6, 2005 | Visual Arts Gallery
Press Release | Special Events

Circadian Slippage, 2005
acrylic on canvas
58 x 54"
 

Korean-born painter Leeah Joo's narrative paintings are set through the frames of windows. Windows are architecture's built-in picture frames – cropping our views, casting our shadows on their curtains and screens, and reflecting our image in their glass. Portraying both traditional Korean-paper screen and American double-hung glass windows, Joo's detailed paintings place us at the edges of these frames to peer into abridged intimate moments. Her work depicts silhouettes cast against paper screens like a puppet play; a view out a window reveling a suburban neighborhood at dusk while simultaneously reflecting the artist standing in the kitchen; and venetian blinds obscuring the goings-on in a bedroom. Narratives surrounding the figures are interrupted and veiled by their quotidian domestic surroundings. Like an innocuous voyeur or peeping tom, the viewer is placed outside strangers' windows or dropped into their living rooms as a surprise guest embarrassedly averting the residents' gazes by looking out the window.

Leeah Joo's skill with paint is evident in her intricate depiction of reflections on glass and trompe-l'oeil lace curtains. But just as the rigid structure of a window serves as a portal through which to view domestic life, the formal aspects and skill behind Joo's work are ways to enter and explore human drama and narrative. Joo states, "In the process of arriving at these images, under the guise of exploring formal pictorial language, life experiences culminate to a level of clarity unavailable to me in any other form."

SPECIAL EVENTS

Opening reception with talk by the artist
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
4:00 – 6:00 pm
Visual Arts Gallery

For more information about special events associated with this exhibition, please call the gallery information line at 765.658.4882