Yun-Mo Ahn

Yun-Mo Ahn has been exploring painting and sculpture as a universal language for more than a decade. After graduating from Seoul’s Hong Ik University, he left his native Korea to study at The City University of New York and became-as a resident of a foreign country-increasingly interested in art as a medium of instant communication beyond cultural borders. Back in Korea, Yun-Mo Ahn’s pre-occupation with the utopian dimension of iconic images as an instant means of communication was infused with a new sense of urgency when he began working with a small group of developmentally challenged children six years ago. Autism severely restricted their verbal skills, but their vivid, radiant drawings spoke eloquently of a rich interior world. Like many artists before him-Kandinsky and Picasso among them Yun-Mo Ahn became fascinated by the children’s colorful and sophisticated creations. He embarked with his six young collaborators on an ambitious walking and exhibition tour, hoping for the “butterfly effect” of the large impact of a small event. And indeed, great acclaim met their work, as the experienced artist lent his sense of structure and order to the children’s exuberant paintings. The resulting wall installations are clearly related to his own works, which often display multiple emblems spread over a large surface.

Jacques Jarrige

Jacques Jarrige initially studied architecture before turning to sculpture and furniture design. The disciplines of architecture and sculpture overtly inform his delicate yet dimensionally territorial objects. The large screens of his most recent Meanders series exude the ephemeral quality of drawings while simultaneously defining the space around them, especially as they create airy enclosures. Leading a workshop at a psychiatric hospital outside Paris (Hopital du Jour de St Maur) for the last 20 years has inspired many patients and also contributed greatly to the development of the pieces created and exhibited at Valerie Goodman Gallery. Jarrige’s lean and agile lines embody a gestural approach translated into furniture with all the tension of an antelope ready to spring off: fragile, vulnerable and beautiful. That kinetic is not only present in his actual mobiles, but also in pieces such as his tall Secretaire and his multi-panel screens: all are carefully calibrated balancing acts, their will to movement barely contained.