3130 Wilshire Blvd #104, Los Angeles, CA 90010 April 9 through May 7, 2022. Shatto Gallery is pleased to debut a suite of calligraphic works by the Korean American artist Kyungja Oh. This exhibition, Beyond…. This show will be on view from April 9 through May 7, 2022. Kyungja Oh is a calligraphy artist who employs audacious brush strokes to explore her personal journey into the legacy of classic and contemporary writings. Born in Korea, the artist rediscovered her true love for calligraphy while residing in the U.S. With the desire to learn and regain familiarity with the ancient teachings, Oh picked up the brush and began to rewrite original texts with calligraphy sensibilities. In the past 20 years of obtaining a rigorous discipline in calligraphy, the artist developed an expertise in writing cursive script; cho-seo, a very cursive style of writing Chinese characters. Cursive texts are historically accompanied by ye-seo; an angular style of writing Chinese characters conveyed legibly. As Oh long surveys these written forms, her style liberates from the convention of classical calligraphic handwriting and articulates with freedom and exuberance. She also takes the trajectory of visually animated consonants of the character. Oh responds to the forces of the ever-changing contemporary world and reconciles the ancient form of writing with the context of our present-day. The installation of umbrellas is an example of her modern take of the infamous poem Gwi-cheon by the poet Cheon Sangbyung which translates to Return to Heaven. While she contemplates the poem’s message of beautiful life lived on earth, she draws on the image of Mary Poppins flying with an umbrella and fantasizes her ascension into heaven. The artist also embarked on writing Cheonjamun which literally means 1000 character text; a Chinese poem from the sixth century used as a principle to teach children. She employs both cho-seo and ye-seo style on a scroll that unfurls approximately 32ft. This work exhibits Oh’s ambitious trajectory of commanding a steady maneuver of the brush as she writes in one streamlined manner so that the fidelity of the characters is not consequently interrupted by discontinuance. This exhibition is a culmination of Kyungja Oh’s striking calligraphic works. The artist’s extensive discipline in lettering manifests vitality of line weight, speed, and breakthroughs in the traditional medium of calligraphy. — Above: Kyungja Oh - Back to Heaven 40" in dia, Acrylic and ink on fabric, 2019 __ Shatto Gallery is pleased to present Coexistence, an exhibition of ceramic sculptures by the Korean American artist Sang Joon Park. The show will be on view from April 9 through May 7, 2022. Park is a bona fide potter who is devoted to the principles of ceramics; a sequential process that humbly begins with clay, then shaped by artist’s hands and forged by high fire. While Park remains faithful to the integrity of pottery, his latest body of work embarks on a new trajectory carrying out a suite of functional ceramic objects out of its context, – a conceptual intersection that has always fascinated the artist. Park’s new work made its genesis from his long interest in converging pottery with the formal concerns of sculpture. The pursuit of conducting this new body of work took place in a forest, a space claimed to be his studio space. The forest serves as a stage and laboratory employing elemental forces as a material to imprint markers of time on raw clay. “New York Winter” for example, is a body of work that embodies the discourse of minimalist sculpture characterized by the lack of subject matter and instead highlighting the significance of the medium. Park deliberately leaves hundreds of unfired wheel-thrown bowls under the canopy of trees with the anticipation to mark the course of the season on these unfired bowls. Over the course of the winter season, as the unfired bowls start to disintegrate, alter in shape, Park strives to return clay back to its source of origin. “Memory of Longview'', another installation performed in the forest, is an installation of ceramic bowls stacked on top of another, extending similarly to the height of the surrounding trees. The act of stacking bowls on top of another, illuminates the meditative practice of stacking rocks into a tower, commanding one to be steady, focused and still. Park elicits a material translation between the functional and sculptural, carrying out the ceramic bowls to elegantly manifest in physicality of forms. Park’s extensive practice possesses both traditional and modern values of ceramics. The aesthetic style of his functional wares is adorned with meticulous embellishments of the traditional Korean techniques like - inhwamun: a stamping and inlay technique, and gwiyal: a slip glazing technique which manifests bold and expressive traits. Coexistence surveys both the conceptual approach of ceramics as well as the aesthetics of well intended functional wares rendering this medium in the expanded field. Park Sang Joon currently resides and works in upstate New York. Sang Joon has been selected to participate in the most prestigious craft shows such as Smithsonian Craft Show and Philadelphia Museum of Art and Craft Show. — Above: Sang Joon Park - Memory of Brooklyn, Ceramic, 30" x 10', 2018