Art Projects International

Art Projects International is pleased to present Color as Space — the third of the gallery’s BACK WALL initiatives — featuring works by Bahar Behbahani, Mariano Ferrante, Seokmin Ko, Il Lee, Soo Im Lee, Filipe Rocha da Silva, Gwenn Thomas, Richard Tsao, and others. The exhibition foregrounds color and brings attention to how contemporary artists use color, beyond any synesthetic tendencies, to define concept, dimension, and territory.

About the artists

Bahar Behbahani (b. 1973, Tehran, Iran. Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY) is a recipient of the 2019 Creative Capital Award. In 2017, Behbahani’s solo exhibition Let the Garden Eram Flourish, curated by Smooth Ugochukwu Nzewi, was presented at the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College. Behbahani’s work has been featured in numerous international biennales including the 2^nd Lahore Biennale, Pakistan (2020); 7^th Moscow International Biennale of Contemporary Art, Russia (2017); 11^th Shanghai Biennale, China (2016); The Prologue Exhibition for the 2016 Honolulu Biennial (2014); 18^th Biennale of Sydney, Australia (2012); and Sharjah Biennial 10, UAE (2011). Recent exhibitions include: All Water Has a Perfect Memory, Wave Hill (2019), Open Sessions 15, The Drawing Center, New York (2019); Active Forms, Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE (2018); Garden Coup, Thomas Erben Gallery, NY (2016); and Marking 2, Art Projects International, NY (2016). Her work is represented in major collections including the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College; Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE; and Queensland Museum, Australia.

Mariano Ferrante (b. 1974, Bahía Blanca, Argentina. Lives and works in Buenos Aires, Argentina) has had solo exhibitions and commissions in leading cultural centers in Buenos Aires including Fundación PROA, Centro Cultural de España, and Centro Cultural Recoleta. His work has also been shown at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires; Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires; and Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Buenos Aires. Recent site-specific commissions include: Monocromía en cuatro colores Nro 2 at Centro Cultural Córdoba, Argentina (2021); Polyphony of Four Colors at Sala de Camara at Usina del Arte, Buenos Aires (2020); Transformations N1/2019 at Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church Day School, New York (2019); and Cosmorama 2009/2015 at Belgrano Subway Station, E line, Buenos Aires (2015). Ferrante’s work is represented in major collections including the Museum of Contemporary Art of Buenos Aires (MACBA); Francis J. Greenburger Collection, New York; Montefiore Fine Art Collection, New York; and Union Industrial Argentina, Buenos Aires.

Seokmin Ko (b. 1984, Gunsan, Korea. Lives and works in South Korea) is a recipient of many prestigious awards including the 2012 SongEun ArtCube Artist award. Ko’s first U.S. solo exhibition The Square was presented in 2012 at Art Projects International, New York. Other solo exhibitions include: Seokmin Ko: Strip Show, Art Projects International, NY (2014) and Seokmin Ko: The Square, SongEun ArtCube, Seoul (2012). Recent exhibitions include: Blurred Horizons, Art Projects International, NY (2018); Not Your Ordinary Art Storage, SongEun ArtStorage, Seoul (2017); Mirror Mirror, Spacemom Museum of Art, Chongju, Korea (2016), Summer Love, SongEun Art Space, Seoul (2015), and FOTOSEPTIEMBRE USA, San Antonio, TX (2014). His work is represented in major collections including the Fidelity Corporate Art Collection, Boston; Montefiore Collection, New York; and SongEun Art and Cultural Foundation, Seoul. Reviews and feature articles about Seokmin Ko have appeared in major publications including Artnews, CNN Photos, Photo+, and Art in Culture.

Il Lee (b. 1952 Seoul, Korea. Lives and works in New York) is celebrated for his pioneering work with ballpoint pen that began over 40 years ago. Lee’s innovative and historically grounded ballpoint pen works were the subject of a critically-acclaimed mid-career retrospective at the San Jose Museum of Art in 2007. Museums exhibiting his work include The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Palms Springs Art Museum, Queens Museum of Art, Crow Museum of Art, Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, and National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea. Work by Il Lee is represented in prominent collections, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Vilcek Foundation, San Jose Museum of Art, Palm Springs Art Museum, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea, Leeum Samsung Museum of Art (Seoul), and Société Bic (France), among others.

Soo Im Lee (b. 1954 Seoul, Korea. Lives and works in New York) studied painting at Hong-Ik University in Seoul in the 1970s at height of minimalist, monochromatic painting’s presence. Lee came to the United States in 1981 to concentrate on printmaking studies and received her M.A. in Printmaking from New York University. Also recognized for her short story writings, Lee has been a long-time popular columnist for a major Korean language newspaper in the United States. Recent exhibitions include: Soo Im Lee: Across Time and Place, Art Projects International (2017); Marking 2, Art Projects International, NY (2016); Open (C)ALL: Up for Debate, BRIC, NY (2016); Coloring Time, Korean Cultural Service NY (2013); Intersecting Lines, Art Projects International, NY (2012); 911 Arts: A Decade Later, Commons Gallery, New York University (2011), Absence, Queens Museum of Art: Partnership Gallery, NY (2010); and Irrelevant, Arario Gallery, NY (2010).

Filipe Rocha da Silva (b. 1954, Portugal) currently lives and works in Lisbon, Portugal. Trained as a painter, he has long been fascinated with patterns and draws thousands of tiny figures in rendered expanses. His recent textile work based on traditional secular weaving crafts common in Portugal, blurs the conventional divisions between craft and fine art and resists fixed boundaries. Recent exhibitions include: Filipe Rocha da Silva, Here to There: Textile Drawings, Art Projects International, NY (2018); Blurred Horizons, Art Projects International, NY (2018); Post Painting, Casa das Artes de Tavira, Portugal (2017); Desenhos Têxteis, Fundação Arpad Szenes Vieira da Silva, Lisbon (2016); and Bl, MUTE, Lisbon (2016). His work is represented in major collections, including the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, Portugal; Centro de Arte Moderna do Funchal, Madeira, Portugal; Centro de Arte Moderna, Museu da Cidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal; Museu de Arte Contemporânea, Fundação de Serralves, Porto, Portugal; and Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Unión Fenosa, A Coruña, Spain.

Gwenn Thomas (b. Rhode Island) lives and works in New York. She studied at the Sorbonne, Paris, and graduated from the Cooper Union School of Art, New York. Thomas’ work has been widely exhibited, and a survey of her work was published by Charta (Milan, Italy) in 2013. Recent museum exhibitions include: DUST: The Plates of the Present, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2020; Gwenn Thomas: Moments of Place, Point of Contact Gallery at Syracuse University, 2014; Number 6: Flaming Creatures, Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf, Germany, 2012-13; Accomplices. The Photographer and the Artist Around 1970, Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Poland, 2011. Her work is represented in major collections including The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Harvard Art Museums/ Fogg Museum; Graphic Arts Collection, Princeton University Library; Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany; ‘Plates of the Present’ Collection, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris; São Schlumberger, Paris; C.A.M. Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, Portugal; and Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf, Germany.

Richard Tsao (b. 1954, Bangkok, Thailand) moved to New York in 1976, where he currently lives and works. His 1995 breakout first solo exhibition in New York at the Queens Museum featured Tsao’s color saturated multi-layered paintings described as “chromatically opulent, process-intensive abstraction” by Holland Cotter who reviewed the show in The New York Times. Since the mid-1990s, Tsao has shown extensively in the United States and Asia. Recent solo exhibitions include: Richard Tsao: Green Acres, Art Projects International, New York (2021); Richard Tsao: Monotypes, Art Projects International, New York (2020); Richard Tsao: Works from Industry City, Art Projects International, New York (2014); Richard Tsao: Nam Wan, Art Projects International, New York (2011). His work is represented in major collections including the Weatherspoon Art Museum, Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts Foundation Collection, and Montefiore Fine Art Collection, New York.

For additional information and images and to arrange your visit, please contact api@artprojects.com or 212-343-2599.

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