In More Beer.For Instance (2013), an impossibly symmetrical bouquet of flat, folky flowers emerge from a disposable paper cup. This is imagined, makeshift Ikebana. In Kitsune (2012), an oversized cherry blossom branch sprouts from the tiny enclave of a plastic yogurt container. MOKU HANGA FOR PC SERIESSimilar concerns appear within Nam’s much more playful series of moku hanga prints depicting cut flowers doomed to fail within unlikely consumer products repurposed as vases. It is anti-imagery to that of suburban sprawl and the generic, unendurable McMansion-style homes endemic of unsustainable development. What kind of neighborhood is Nam imagining? The point is that we do not yet know. In Occurrence (2012), it is similarly unclear if Nam’s strangely composed set of wood-beams is the beginning or the end of something, a project started or abandoned. Indeed, in her wallpaper-like lithograph, Lawrence in Blue Toile (2012), it is clear that Nam utilizes four distinct lithography stones repeatedly within one work, each of a distinct domestic structure either mid-construction, or mid-collapse. In other words, all of the structures appearing within Nam's work will surely soon change. Instead, Nam depicts architectural structures either in a state of construction or destruction that are much more dubious and mutable than the finished, pre-designated landscapes of the Garden Manual. However, Nam resists the urge to depict pristine, finished landscapes composed from the accepted stuff of dynasty. The artists’ job, as prescribed by the manual, was not to imagine new forms, but rather to arrange compositions from the perfected set of forms offered within the manual. Specifically, the Manual attempts to regulate the making of forms appearing within a larger landscape, including trees, hills, stones, people, houses, flora, and fauna. Originally compiled in the late 17th century by the Qing Dynasty, the Mustard Seed Garden Manual was (and still is) used as a teaching guide for young artists to learn standards of Eastern image making. MOKU HANGA FOR PC MANUALThe arrangement of repeated forms in space is a technique Nam gleamed from her studies of (and fascination with) the classic Chinese painting manual Jieziyuan Huazhuan(or, Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting). As a printmaker, Nam works in multiples in multiple senses of the word not only can she produce a number of prints of the same finished artwork, but she has built up an arsenal of individual image elements upon the surfaces of her woodblocks and lithography stones that are ready-to-print within any given composition the artist imagines. Artist Yoonmi Nam produces delicate and precise lithographic and moku hanga(Japanese woodblock) prints that poetically point towards the impermanence of place, both real and perceived.
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