PAST EXHIBITION

line/선

Gi (Ginny) Huo

Baxter St is proud to present line/선, the first solo show of interdisciplinary artist Gi (Ginny) Huo, who was in residence at Baxter St earlier this year. Huo’s new immersive installation – their most ambitious to date – draws upon the poetics of observing the unobservable and how lines can evoke unspoken experiences. line/선  questions  topics ranging from Korean astronomy and Shamanism to Mormon iconography, all through the lens of their family’s history. Through photography and sculpture, Huo connects both personal and political histories in a visual landscape which includes their writing and poetry.

VIEWING ROOM EXHIBITION ->

Incorporating a wide range of material including family photographs, inspiration from Korean archeological maps, and stone sculptures – all thoughtfully arranged around the gallery – Huo’s installation creates a new landscape that explores the spiritual and visual connections between seemingly disparate subjects, places, and eras.

At the core of Huo’s exhibition is the artist’s studies of the poetics of a line. Huo is interested in the duality of lines, and how they can serve both as markers of division and as an indication of the connections between things. The gallery at Baxter St is filled with both visual lines – from the abstracted telephone wires stretching across the space to the metal bar railing – and conceptual lines, in the form of the connections between history and the present moment as well as the visual dialogue between various elements of the exhibition. Huo’s installation encourages the visitor to look at all corners of the gallery space – to look up and down and back and forth across the geographies of space and time while considering how lines are determined and considered. Various elements of the installation are collaborations with the artists’ relatives, from the stones they created together with their mother – which reference the white stones Mormons believe are given to those who enter the celestial kingdom – to the historic photographs taken by their relatives in Korea.

Huo’s exhibition opens in tandem with the publication of their most recent book, calling/ 부름, published and designed by Small Editions and debuting at the Printed Matter Book Fair taking place in NYC from October 13th through 16th. Continuing their practice of drawing connections, Huo has placed three images from the book in the Baxter St exhibition, displayed as if floating within a vinyl print depicting the sky. While both installation and book can be enjoyed separately, the two works are complementary, incorporating traces of one another and providing hints of the various lines present in the artist’s geography, from the timelines of heaven in Mormonism to the military demarcation line separating North and South Korea.