Surface Tension

Cristin Tierney Gallery is pleased to present Surface Tension, a new installation by Korean American artist Jean Shin. This is Shin’s first exhibition with the gallery, and it opens on Thursday, February 25th with a reception from 6:00 to 8:00 pm. The artist will be present.

Shin is nationally recognized for her monumental installations that transform everyday objects into elegant expressions of identity and community. In Surface Tension, she investigates the divide between public and private in urban spaces by using a material very familiar to New York City residents: the plywood walls surrounding construction sites.

At first glance, the exhibition seems comprised of a series of monolithic paintings on panel, each featuring an abstract composition modeled in subtly varied tones of blue. The panels’ beauty, however, belies their distinctive origins: they previously served as construction fencing, and their compositions are products of chance that document a dialogue between two opposing forces at work. With surfaces that have been continually painted over after every new appearance of graffiti, paper posts, and other marks, the “paintings” in Surface Tension are, in fact, found objects chronicling past erasures.

The results of this contested partnership between public expressions like graffiti and their subsequent redaction allude to the deep history of negotiating urban space. City residents, living in constantly changing environments, know this negotiation well. Construction fences abound in neighborhoods and line commutes, intervening in daily activity. Displaying these “collective paintings” in the gallery, the artist calls attention to what is often overlooked, revealing in the painted gestures the unintended byproducts of urban transformation with all of its inherent engagement and struggle.