Illuminations–InsectS–Stones

Image: James Clark, Bundle, 2017,
vinyl, cold-cathode fluorescent tub, 5 x 9.5 x 8 inches

January 30– March 22, 2025

Opening Reception: Thursday, January 30, 2025, 4:30–7:30pm

Featured Artists: aricoco, James Clark, Nianxin Li and Se Young Yim

The Yeh Art Gallery at St. John’s University is pleased to present Illuminations–Insects–Stones, an iteration of the touring exhibition Illumination: The Sculpture of James O. Clark. This expanded version of the exhibition looks at the artwork of James Clark in conversation with work by three of his previous students: aricoco, Nianxin Li, and Se Young Yim. The exhibition will be on view from January 30th through March 22, 2025, and there will be an opening reception on Thursday, January 30th from 4:30 to 7:30pm.

From computer screens and movie theaters to headlights and nightlights, modern life engages with a plethora of materials and objects emitting artificial light. The properties of light—in constant motion, fleeting, shifting and seductive—have served as the foundation for New York-based artist James Clark’s artistic practice for the last forty years. Illuminations–Insects–Stones brings together a selection of Clark’s sculptures created between 1993 and 2024 that forefront his experimental approach to sculpture that dances in the intersection of material, light and form. Clark works with industrial materials and colored lights including neon, fluorescent, incandescent, argon lights, and electroluminescent wire to dissect the components of everyday illumination and unravel the eccentricities of optical perception and the beauty behind the mechanics of light. A primordial glow emanates from Clark’s sculptures that envelops the viewer in a space of playful curiosity and this exhibition presents a unique opportunity to experience how these works have informed each other over time, but also how the teachings of the artist have informed another generation of artists. For many years, Clark has worked as a professor at the School of Visual Arts and the University of Connecticut, among other schools. This exhibition considers how the generosity, humor and evolution of ideas that develops through one artist’s studio practice extends beyond the studio and into the relationship between mentor and mentee.

Nianxin Li, Pink light, blue light, 2024,
acrylic on canvas, 24 x 48 inches

As Clark looks at natural phenomena such as the perception of light, artists aricoco, Nianxin Li, and Se Young Yim share in a curiosity of science and spirit of experimentation as they take inspiration from the interrelationships between organisms in nature, such as the social behaviors of insects. Nianxin Li’s biomorphic paintings evoke mysterious snail-like forms set in unknown depths, their cinematic luminosity bathed in toxic hues that conjure the reflective sheen of a sports car. The delicate amoeba float in proximity to their protective shell, exposing their potential vulnerabilities but also offering an alternative where binaries such as interiority/exteriority exist as a fluid state of being.

Se Young Yim, Dance with our eyes-closed,
2023, acrylic, 38x29 inches

aricoco’s work uses biomimicry as well as her own deep-seeded fear of insects to explore the non-hierarchical collectivism and eusociality of ants. Through a combination of insect social research and recollection of rituals based on her childhood experiences in Japan, aricoco develops characters, costumes, performances and videos that consider how humans learn from forms of self-fortification and community-building in insects. Se Young Yim’s intimate paintings are informed by her daily routine of writing dream journals and experience of navigating the city, reflecting on the complexities of love and the fleeting nature of connections between people and place. Often focused on intimate moments that explore the vulnerable physicality of the body— an image of two figures reclining morphs into spider-like beings locked in an embrace. Her kinetic rock sculptures evoke the movement of turtles and speak to overlapping durational space between the stillness of people resting and the immense scale of geological time.

aricoco, Forager, 2021, Mixed media (Fabric, faux-fur, vinyl, eggshell, painted aluminum sheet) , Dimensions variable

Illumination: The Sculpture of James O. Clark originated at The Clara M. Eagle Gallery, Murray State University in Murray, Kentucky (2021) and travelled to University of Tennessee's UT Downtown Gallery in Knoxville (2021) and Indiana University’s Herron School of Art and Design (2022). The exhibition was curated by T. Michael Martin and the exhibition concept was by Creighton Michael.

BIOS
aricoco (Ari Tabei) is an interdisciplinary visual artist based in NYC who was born and raised in Tokyo. She received an M.F.A. in sculpture and video performance art from the University of Connecticut in 2007. She has exhibited and performed at numerous venues throughout New York and beyond with significant solo exhibitions at ChaShama, NY (2022), LaMama, NY supported by Franklin Furnace Fund (2018), Wave Hill, NY (2015), Real Art Ways, CT, and A.I.R Gallery. NY (2008). In 2022 aricoco was awarded the residency at the Sharpe Walentas Studio Program, and in 2021 she received a New York City Artist Corps Grant to continue working on her socially-engaged collaborative project PIPORNOT.

Nianxin Li was born in Chongqing, China and currently lives and works in New York. She graduated from the Florence Academy of Fine Arts (BFA, 2021) and New York School of Visual Arts (MFA, 2023). Since 2022, Nianxin Li haas participated in various group exhibitions at galleries in China and the United States, including Tang Contemporary Art, La Beast Gallery, KennaXu Gallery, LATITUDE Gallery, Chambers Fine Art, 5-50 Gallery, VillageOneArt Gallery, and New Collectors Gallery. In 2023, she held her first solo exhibition Entering the House at chi K11 Art Museum in Shanghai.

Se Young Yim is a New York-based painter and sculptor. She was born and raised in Seoul, South Korea, where she studied Fashion at Sungshin Women’s University. She received an MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York in 2022. Her work has been exhibited at CICA Museum and Wess project space in Seoul, South Korea; The Holy Art in London; and Tutu Gallery, Subtitled NYC, The Visionary Projects, Trestle Artspace, New Collectors gallery, Blah Blah gallery in the U.S. In 2023 she was selected for a residency at GlogauAIR in Berlin, Germany, and had a solo showcase there.

James Clark is a New York-based sculptor and professor at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Clark’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and was the subject of 10 solo exhibitions and over a 100 group exhibitions. He has received numerous awards and honors including: 2018 American Academy of Arts and Letters Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Award, 2008 Sidney Simon Sculpture Award at the National Academy of Museum, 183rd Annual Exhibition, New York, NY; 1998 Award, American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY; in 1989 a Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation; 1983 an individual artist award from the National Endowment for the Arts in graphics; and in 1982 an individual artist award from the National Endowment for the Arts in sculpture, among others. James Clark received his BS in from Kutztown State University, Kutztown, PA in 1974.