Multifariousness Exhibition @ Mizuma Kips Gallery NYC
“Multifariousness” at Mizuma and Kips Gallery
April 21-May 9, 2021
Seung Lee, an artist teaching at Long Island University, has curated “Multifariousness,” a show of his work and that of four students. The artists range in age from their twenties to their seventies and include one person still in school. They also represent a broad spectrum of styles, abstract and figurative. Lee has created this show in response to the corona virus quarantine, demonstrating that despite the pandemic, people continue to make art as a way of creating a meaningful dialogue between themselves and others. Art, Lee believes, builds a bridge between people even in the most difficult of times, as this show makes clear.
Seung Lee is a highly recognized artist who has also taught for thirty years. His drawings in this show reflect his Korean background: Bamboo in Fog (2021) beautifully captures the plant; the tall, narrow stalks cross over each other In green and blue. It can be seen as an ecological plea. Chris Ann Ambry, well known as a printmaker, includes among her works the print Lean on Me (2021), a scene of a forest enveloped by an orange haze below and a net-like canopy above. Her lyricism is remarkable. Kandi Spindler makes narrow, lozenge shaped multimedia sculpture. Bohemian Deco (2021), multicolored, made of glass, acrylic, and wood, has an unusually rough surface that intensifies its interest as an object of beauty. Carol Kingston offers The Lightness of Being (2019-20), a mixed-media painting that looks like an aerial image of water and land, taken as a photograph by a satellite. Its blues and tans are strikingly attractive, emphasizing nature on a large scale. And the photographic work of Long Island University student Olivia Castagna, in the case of Don’t Let Me Ruin Me (2021), can be stark and dramatic. In this self-portrait, the artist stands with her back to us, without clothes. Two disembodied hands grip her on the left side.
“Multifariousness” expresses a broad range of styles and sensibilities, celebrating art’s inevitable pluralism in a time when no particular way of working holds sway. The artists in this group example a broad age range, proving that fine art can be practiced along the lifespan. Also, this work was made during the time of quarantine, proving as well that very good work cn be created in times of considerable stress. Seung Lee’s long tenure as a teacher has made him particularly sensitive to the nuanced, differeing styles of his students, who clearly enjoyed freedom under his tutelage. Lee, like the others, has more than a lot to offer in this show, which emphasizes diversity of thought, feeling, and craft. In a time when expression seems to be moving in the direction of a narrow sensibility, “Multifariousness” proves that fine art can successfully maintain its broad character,.