Baik Art is pleased to present Origin, a group exhibition including works by Yang Jung Uk, Sydney Croskery, and Maryrose Cobarrubias Mendoza. This show aims to highlight their respective practices as they look to sourcing found objects as a way to convey contemporary critical discourse and autobiographical narratives. This exhibition will be on display from May 19, 2018, through July 28, 2018. An opening reception will be held on Saturday, May 19, 2018, from 6 pm – 8 pm.

Does the protective packing of art, for the purpose its preservation, add to its intrinsically sculptural quality? Are the painterly representations of archived ephemera akin to the readymade materials they hang beside? Or does illusion and context construed ones understanding to mirror that of the authors? It is these lines of thought that structure the following artist’s contemplations on found materials as both displaced commodity and anecdotal signifier. Considering the “found object” as a societal residue of sorts, the artists in this exhibition aim to manipulate the viewing of banal objects through industrialized re-packaging, juxtaposition, and idiosyncratic interpretation.

Displayed works revolve around the continuous sourcing and altering of mass-produced products, as they relate to social experience. Pieces such as Mendoza’s, Brown, illustrate the various ways in which color can be classified through divisive branding, causing the interpretation between existing materials to transform greatly, despite offering congruent practical functions. It is this uncanny play on our understanding of the familiar that blurs the lines between interpretation and fact.

Jung Uk’s use of kitsch items within larger constructions deepens sentiments of ideological displacement and cultural specificity. His meticulously composed shipping materials, which engulf locally sourced readymades, insinuates a necessity for industrialized aesthetics and commercial viability within an artwork. Authenticity then, becomes perversely transformed when faced with consumer demand and economic pressure, further robbing objects of their original intentions.

Furthermore, interdisciplinary wall installations like Croskery’s, Think/ Believe, perpetuate discourses involving found materials and the nature of their representations. In this work, one may notice allusions to Rene Magritte’s allegorical pipe. Much like his 1928 painting, “Treachery of Images,” Croskery’s work grapples with the documentation of objects as they exist in the material and digital sphere. Thus, highlighting current conflictions involving our collective aptitude to identify context and discern between truth and fiction.