Strangers, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Mie Yim, will open at MSFA on January 9th, 2009, and remain on view until February 7th. With this body of work, Yim moves beyond the ambiguous, seemingly sweet and dream-like world of her earlier pastels into an almost aggressively terrifying other world, populated by creatures who are simultaneously anxiety-ridden and anxious-making. For a real world currently undergoing profound political, social, cultural, and economic crises, the fear embodied in the new paintings feels especially timely.

A Korean-born artist living and working in New York City, Mie Yim has constantly been concerned with feelings and concepts of disconnection, alienation and alterity. Using images derived in part from childrens’ toys, especially stuffed animals such as bunnies and bears, she has created universes in which these infantile objects play out the struggles of human adulthood. In past exhibitions, Yim worked exclusively in pastel, exploiting a palette highly suggestive of children’s illustration. The soft coloration and the toy-like, iconic abstractness of the figures contrasted strongly with the undercurrent of eroticism and violence suggested by the placement of the creatures in relation to one another and to their environments. These works were exemplars of the classical Freudian concept of the uncanny. The viewer experiences unease, but the source of the emotion remains uncertain. For the current show, along with her shift to the medium of painting, there has been a shift in imagery as well, and a consequent shift in the emotional impact. Although the characters depicted are still clearly based on toys, they have been dislocated from the landscape of dream to the landscape of nightmare. They have also evolved from the stereotypical to the specific, and each of the paintings can be seen as a highly individualized and personal portrait. Each of the paintings’ subjects can be read as the bearer of an identifiable and overt emotion, and the emotion is far from soothing.

According to Mie Yim:

This work is autobiographical. Reaching into my psyche, I utilize fragmented images of childhood memories that implode in my subconscious in the form of shredded narratives. I explore the meaning and the integrity of a misfit, even though the line between the center and the marginal has blurred in today’s world. I belong nowhere, so I’m free. I identify myself as a stranger, both to the big Western art boys of the past and present and to vacant, poppy Asian culture.

Mie Yim’s work has been exhibited in various galleries in the United States and in Europe, in solo and group exhibitions, including Galerie in Arco, Torino, Italy; Lehmann Maupin Gallery and Jeff Bailey Gallery in New York. Yim received a BFA degree from the Philadelphia College of Art. She also studied at the Tyler School of Art in Rome, and the Parsons School in New York City.

The opening of the exhibition also celebrates the release of Mie Yim’s The A.B.C. of S.E.X., an illustrated alphabet book published by Pointed Leaf Press, New York. Limited edition prints of each letter, created to accompany the deluxe edition of the book, will be shown in the gallery’s project room.