The Waste Land Paintings

NEW YORK – Maurice Arlos Fine Art is proud to present a series of drawings and monumental paintings by Younghee Choi Martin, March 25th - April 28 th, 2002. The artist’s reception will be on Tuesday, March 26th, 2002, from 6 to 8 p.m. Gallery hours are Monday–Saturday, 11am– 7pm.

This series of recent work is inspired by T. S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land. The multi-faceted Western and Eastern literary underpinnings of Eliot’s work parallel Younghee’s tactile references to traditional and modern painting processes, which she successfully combines with contemporary intensity and meaning. Younghee’s paintings reorient us within a new tableau of imaginatively superreal space. Like the reading of Eliot’s beautiful, complex poem, Younghee’s compositions provide many satisfying interactions with each engagement.

The most immediately striking element of Younghee’s s paintings is their color. She skillfully manipulates the illuminated atmosphere of each landscape to reveal drama. Her figures, deftly integrated into her landscapes as both symbol and material, emerge in the same way her compositions do, over time, organically. Her rhythmic drawing style continuously informs her painting process and creates a dynamic ambiguity between painted surface and illusionistic depth.

Within Younghee’s imagery, allusive narratives exist among theatrical scenes, and the layers of reference range from the literary and specific—for example, Eliot’s Tiresias and Philomel appear in many compositions—to the personally mythic and mysterious. She presents us with emblematic personages such as the classically standing man, or seated woman, and the archetypical child with outstretched arms. Younghee’s paintings achieve the intensity of the emotions, thus translating Eliot’s enigmatic poem into a new, yet timeless, form.

Younghee Choi Martin has devoted her life to painting and has received numerous awards, including one from the National Endowment for the Arts. She has had solo shows in New York City, throughout the United States, Korea and Japan. Most recently, her painting By the Water from The Waste Land series was exhibited in the Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. She lives and paints in New York City.