Polyphonic Improvisation: Works by Alex Paik

Polyphonic Improvisation: Works by Alex Paik
September 4^th—25^th, 2010
Opening reception: Saturday, September 4^th, 7:00 – 10:00 pm
Cincinnati, OH—U·turn Art Space is very pleased to announce Polyphonic Improvisation, a solo exhibition by Alex Paik. All of the works in the exhibition are small-scale paper constructions that emphasize their own thoughtful physicality and colorful compositions. By giving our large gallery space over to such discreet visual objects, U·turn hopes to present them with the breathing room they merit and to invite the viewer into a mental space that playful, casual, jazzy and liberated.
Paik’s work comes out of a tradition of painting and experiments with formalist languages of geometric abstraction, patterns, arabesques and cartoons. As these works are constructions and collages with irregular edges and elements that curl forward into space or bend and overlap back onto themselves, they interact with their surroundings and viewers more directly than conventional paintings. Their color schemes are jubilant, joyful and sly in how saccharine Paik dares them to become. Paik suggests that through the studio and somewhere over the rainbow there is a visual landscape that is terribly specific while remaining undefined. The glimpses and fragments of such a place are presented in Polyphonic Improvisation. They are fragile and slight, carriers of the fizz of imagination and the pop of a Non-Objective visual language that exists with total self-awareness in a contemporary world overrun with stimuli.
About Paik’s own work he has written:

My work lies somewhere between a painting, a toy, and a song. I guess you could call them visual toy songs, but that would sound really lame. I’m not really a formalist in the sense that I agree with the Platonic undertones or the inherent Modernist dogma associated with it, but more like the 5 year old son of a formalist who is inventing a sandbox formalism – a formalism that is more interested in problem solving and invention rather than answer-giving or unified systems of thought. It’s not that I’m not serious about making art but I just think that artists seem to take themselves and their pseudo-philosophical ideas way too seriously. Besides, what’s more serious than a kid playing with his toys?
Maybe if Ellsworth Kelly, Paul Klee, Thomas Nozkowski, and Richard Tuttle were the Lost Boys on Never Land and grew up on video games, classical music, and indie pop, this is what they would make. Or maybe they would focus on fighting pirates.

Alex Paik currently lives and works in New York. He holds a BFA (with honors) from Pennsylvania State University and an MFA from University of Pennsylvania. Paik is the co-founder of the Philadelphia alternative gallery Tiger Strikes Asteroid, where his work has been featured in several exhibitions in the past two years. He has exhibited extensively in Philadelphia at Fleisher Ollman Gallery, Air Space, Gallery Siano, Little Berlin, Bridgette Mayer Gallery, Stella Elkins Tyler Gallery and Sweatshop. He has also shown at the Altered Esthetics in Minneapolis, MN; Around the Coyote, Chicago, IL; Emporio Peroni, Puerto Rico; and Pocket Utopia, Brooklyn, NY. Paik’s work has been reviewed and featured in numerous publications, with frequent appearances in the Philadelphia Inquirer, and notable inclusion in the #69 issue of New American Paintings. For more information about Paik and his work, please visit his website here.