NEW YORK, NY.- Leila Heller Gallery is presenting Evanescence & Regeneration, a solo exhibition by acclaimed Korean artist Ran Hwang, on view from October 15th through December 7th, 2024. Residing in both Seoul and New York City, Hwang is renowned for her intricate and meditative contemporary installations. Her works are featured in prominent private and public collections, including The Brooklyn Museum, Houston Museum of Fine Art, and The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul.

Evanescence & Regeneration explores the transient nature of existence, a theme central to Hwang’s work and artistic process. Using unconventional materials such as buttons, threads, and thousands of meticulously hammered pins, Hwang creates visually captivating installations that evoke the cyclical themes of life, death, and rebirth. The repetitive and labor-intensive act of hammering pins by hand is not only a creative process but also a meditative one. It serves as a metaphor for the passage of time, allowing Hwang to visualize cosmological cycles, where each step of creation and rebirth through the process of conception, installation, and de-installation, mirrors the impermanence of the natural world.

Visitors to Evanescence & Regeneration will experience works that embody a delicate balance between enduring presence and fleeting existence. Hwang’s installations are site-specific, thoughtfully designed to interact with the space of Leila Heller Gallery at 22 E 80th Street. The de-installation of these works symbolizes the end of one life cycle and the beginning of another, reinforcing the artist’s contemplative approach to ephemerality and regeneration.

This exhibition offers a deep exploration of the themes of transformation, spirituality, and time, inviting viewers to pause and consider the delicate and cyclical nature of life itself.

Born in the Republic of Korea in 1960, Ran Hwang currently lives and works in both Seoul and New York City. She studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York City and attended the Graduate School of Fine Arts at Chung-Ang University in Seoul.

Hwang’s motifs of intricate blossoms and Buddha’s – which appear across a variety of media – stem from her fascination with Zen Buddhism. Buddhism is integral to Hwang’s creative process and labor-intensive execution. To construct much of her work, Hwang creates paper buttons by hand, hammering each one approximately twenty-five times until it is secure. Her process requires the utmost concentration and discipline, recalling the meditative state practiced by Zen masters.

Ran Hwang has exhibited at several international institutions including the Queens Museum of Art, New York; The Hudson Valley Center for the Arts, New York; the Chelsea Art Museum, New York; The Seoul Arts Center Museum; and The Jeju Museum of Art, Jeju Island. Hwang’s work is also a part of numerous private and public collections including The Brooklyn Museum, New York; The Des Moines Center for the Arts, Iowa; The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul; and The Hammond Museum, North Salem, NY.