May 2013

Artspace in Raleigh, NC, Offers Works by Melinda Fine and Joomi Chung

Artspace in Raleigh, NC, will present several new exhibits including: Text Terra, featuring works by Melinda Fine, on view in the Upfront Gallery, from May 3 through June 1, 2013. A reception will be held on May 3, from 6-10pm; and Surfaces, featuring works by Joomi Chung, on view in Gallery 1, from May 3 through June 29, 2013. A reception will be held on May 3, from 6-10pm.

With black and white imagery, Melinda Fine visualizes the energetic impact of the vast amounts of data to which we are exposed daily. She layers letters and words in at times explosive, at other times lyrical compositions that express the type, the source and the perception of verbal, visual, and virtual information.

Born in Boston, MA, and raised in Greensboro, NC, Fine received her undergraduate degrees in psychology and English and an MFA in creative writing from UNC-Greensboro. She studied with Fred Chappell, Robert Watson and Lee Zacharias. She studied printmaking with Beth Grabowski at UNC-Chapel Hill and attended two years of graduate school at the School of Design, NCSU, Raleigh. Fine taught graphic design and typography as a professor of art at Meredith College from 1997 to 2008. Juried into Artspace in 2003, Fine occupied Studio 208 from 2008 until 2012.

Joomi Chung’s Surfaces is a 30 by 50-foot floor installation made of recycled rubber. She created the shapes by abstracting found images, with a process that begins by tracing images from various sources onto clear acetate rolls and then reworking the two-dimensional shapes into three dimensions. She composes the hundreds of rubber forms onto the ground in an ever-changing installation. Each individual shape is lightweight, and as it accrues in a floor installation, it becomes very heavy. A form of radical mapping, she translates memories into lived experiences or, as the artist puts it, the “topographical landscape of memory.” Chung is interested in the physical relationship of her work with viewers, and in creating a simultaneous visual and physical space, “interpreted as a map and contemplated as a landscape.”

Born in South Korea, Chung moved to the US in 2001. She earned a BFA in painting and an MFA Research Certificate at Hong IK University in Seoul, South Korea. She went on to obtain an MFA degree from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her work is a part of several permanent collections, including the Dayton Art Institute and the Cincinnati Art Museum. Recent exhibitions include the December Artists Group Exhibition, SÍM Gallery, Reykjavik, Iceland and The 12th Alpan International 2010, Alpan Gallery, Huntington, NY, at which she was awarded Best in Show by juror Hitomi Iwasaki, Director of Exhibitions at the Queens Museum of Arts in New York.

Artspace is a nonprofit visual art center dedicated to providing arts education and community outreach programs, creating an environment of more than 100 professional artists and presenting nationally acclaimed exhibitions. Located in downtown Raleigh in the historic Sanders Ford building, Artspace has been providing the community with the opportunity to interact with working artists and to participate in hands-on arts education since 1986.

For further information check our NC Institutional Gallery listings, call the center at 919/821-2787 or visit (www.artspacenc.org).

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