The Riverside Gallery presents an exhibition from March 18th to July 15th, 2020. The exhibition reflects the importance of the Hand of the Artist in the creative endeavor. While Minimalism and some Conceptual art dismiss it, the Hand of the Artist within the context of Formalism plays an important role in allowing the artist to experience giving birth to the work, made stroke by stroke, and allow a unique personality and expression of style to be born. With every touch of the Hand, energy with a unique sensibility and vision of the artist is imbued into the work. In this sense, the core tenets of Minimalism, that the Hand of the Artist is an unessential distraction, and Conceptualism, that the work is complete when it is conceived as an idea, lack the raw, experiential and personal aspects of the artwork’s creation and birth through the Hand of the Artist within the context of Formalism. While the Conceptual way of thinking can be pertinent to certain kinds of works that are best suited for Conceptualism, Formalism and the Hand of the Artist should regain their importance in contemporary art and discourse.

Boon Ja Choi:

Boon Ja Choi is an artist from Busan, South Korea. She was born in 1952 and earned her degrees at the Seoul National University and the Art Institute of Philadelphia. Choi paints abstract landscapes with colorful strokes that capture a sense of light and energy, somewhat reminiscent of the Modernist painters, including the Post Impressionists and Expressionists, and combining the traditional Korean painting influences. Choi embraces her Eastern origin while exploring the Western tradition of painting.

Michel Meraud:

Michel Meraud is an artist from Thailand who draws with pen on paper, relying on random imagery and chance to create an anarchic weaving. From the anarchic weaving, Meraud perceives a visual pattern of forms that emerges from the chaos and clarifies them into more concrete and detailed shapes.

Chunbum Park:

Chunbum Park is an artist from South Korea, who paints in colorful abstraction and figuration. Park paints portraits of women and sexual fantasy involving women through the eye of the male gaze. He dichotomizes the male gaze into good and bad, in which the good seeks to become the female other as an indispensable self in one’s fantasy.

Joyce Pommer:

Joyce Pommer relies on her subconscious in a free flowing intuitive process, which begins without a preconceived idea or plan. Pommer hopes to instill positive emotions and harmonious energy, as well as creative energy, in the viewers. Inspired by the early Abstract Expressionists, Pommer relies on the unconscious and the spiritual energy to create her paintings.