Korean-born, Los Angeles-based artist, Kyong Boon Oh is a multidisciplinary artist whose work spans sculpture, painting, photo/video collages, and sculptural installations, blending spiritual practice with art practice. She underwent a transformative journey, shifting from creating tall figurative paintings to weaving metal wires, a meditative craft inspired by her father’s legacy and her own struggles with physical illness. Her art, influenced by her experiences as a first-generation immigrant, serves as a personal map that navigates the complex terrain of assimilation, nostalgia, and belonging, situated between chaos and order. Through her evolving practice, which now includes community engagement initiatives like the “Flow with Medium” workshop, she aspires to reveal personal histories as communal destinies that transcends time and space. Currently she is represented by Lois Lambert Gallery in Santa Monica Bergamot Station Arts Center and a founding member of SSGOC (Stone Sculptors Guild of Orange County). Her studios are located in Orange County, CA.
‘Transcendent end is hidden in our own depths, waiting for the chance to occupy a conscious moment. I try to discover and reveal the moment through my art practice.
Weaving influences from handicraft, personal and historical narratives accompanied by my own heritage as a first-generation immigrant artist, I re-contextualize them with the modernist artistic approaches and narrative deconstructions to contemplate overlooked narratives, while projecting possible identities for the marginalized and providing a commentary on redemptive identity. Combining artisanal approach, a process-based abstraction inspired by Arts and Crafts movement, Expressionism, and the Korean Aesthetics of “Yullyeo(cosmic rhythm)” with traditional, geological, industrial and commercial materials along with the discarded, I push the boundaries of material to evoke emotion and to challenge the viewer’s perspective by reflecting the natural order and flow. Using the interior-exterior juxtaposition of my sculptures and the tangled, infinite form in both subtractive and additive mediums as a metaphor of dislocation, nostalgia, and desire for belonging, my art, situated between chaos and order, emotion and meditation, serves as a personal map that navigates the complex and often uncharted terrain of the displacement.
Viewing the repetitive crafting method as a physical pathway for the mind and as the continuity of time and considering the meditative excavation of personal and historical narratives as a place of reconciliation, I hope my art transcends time and space with aspirations for redemption, so beyond the melancholia, this unresolved longing for places or communities or ideals, alludes to transcendence of the self and the ‘Yullyeo.’
EDUCATION
BFA, SAIC (School of the Art Institute of Chicago)
BS, Mathematics, Korea University
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
‘Chorus of The Displaced’, Crafton Hills College Gallery, Yucaipa, CA 2024
‘Walk Slowly – Unknown Path’, Lois Lambert Gallery, Bergamot Station Arts Center, Santa Monica, CA 2023
‘GIL (path)’, Launch LA Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 2022
‘ON THE PATH’, Lois Lambert Gallery, Bergamot Station Arts Center, Santa Monica, CA 2022
‘New Talent II’ Contemporary Art Workshop Gallery, Chicago 2003
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
‘Primarily in the Right Hemisphere’, Getty’s PST ART: Art & Science Collide, Lois Lambert Gallery, Bergamot Station Arts Center, Santa Monica, CA (current)
‘Plateaus: Art that Resonates’, Art Share L.A., CA (current)
’(Be)Longing: Asian Diasporic Crossings’ ReflectSpace Gallery, Glendale Central Library, Glendale, CA 2024
’The Paths We Cross: Perspectives from the Korean Diaspora‘, The University of Hawaii at Hilo, HI 2024
‘MOON & STARS: Los Angeles Asian Women in Art’, BG gallery, Bergamot Station Arts Center, Santa Monica, CA 2024
‘Ellsworth Artist Residency Alumni gallery’, Art Share L.A., CA 2024
‘Nomad II’, The Del Amo Crossing, Torrance, CA (Curated by Torrance Art Museum) 2023
‘Contemplating Boundaries’, Korean Cultural Center LA, CA 2023
‘Artists in Residence: The Ellsworth Artist Residency Program’, Art Share L.A., CA 2023
‘AAPI Celebration’, BG gallery, Bergamot Station Arts Center, Santa Monica, CA 2023
