NEW YORK, NY.- gallery nine5 announces Soojin Cha’s premiere solo exhibition in North America, Eternal Energy: Embroidery Drawing. Cha’s work investigates the medium and materiality of thread in the form of multi-layered embroidered abstract works. Building upon cultural craftsmanship and sweeping movement, Cha creates works that explore the corporeality of art and its viewers.
Cha’s installation, Eternal Protocol, which spans the entire back room of the gallery, requires audience participation, as viewers weave through the hanging threads, wires, and tubes of the hauntingly expansive work. The work simultaneously addresses the physicality of the participant while light and shadow play with the ephemerality of the material. The installation is weightless and heavy, consisting of interlocking lines and hand-embroidered thread, evoking a multitude of physical, emotional, and conceptual sensations.
Her works on canvas and panel read like abstract paintings that have been drawn out from the flat plane: Brighten Up features a deep blue silk screen, through which one can see the colored canvas that serves as its background. Twined thread and wire extend off the screen and past the frame, pushing the boundaries of abstraction and functioning as a constant reminder of the concreteness of the material.
Her newest work on canvas, the triptych Eternal Wave, embodies Cha’s energetic construction methodology. Threads sweep up and around the energy on the panel, trailing off and expanding at turns. Vivid pastel hues serve as the backdrop for intense tones and dyes, conjuring the perception of constant movement.
Two smaller installations speak to the depth of Cha’s craft. Another Becoming and Non Unqualified possess almost carnal characteristics: spiritual beings that hang and sway against the flow of activity in the space. The fragility of each installation is clearly evident, yet each work epitomizes structural strength. Cha’s signature multi-colored threads weave in and out of the pieces whether they are suspended from the ceiling or supine against the wall.
Working through examinations of personal, social, and cultural resonance, Cha’s creations speak to something at once specific and universal. Energy reverberates throughout the rooms at gallery nine5, from vibrations off of her canvases to multi-dimensional installations. It is an energy that draws, first, upon Cha’s South Korean heritage and settles in the nooks of spirituality in the physical space of the gallery and the conceptual space of the viewers. Bridging international gaps through the harmony of her work, Cha comments acutely on the simple complexity of our integral connections with each other.
