Equity Gallery Rebound Series
Installation Shot of “Modern Prometheus”
Hyeseung Marriage-Song: Assembled Parts
By Gina Mischianti
As the premier exhibition of 2019, Hyeseung Marriage-Song’s solo show Modern Prometheus presented a pivotal moment in the mission of Equity Gallery. While the organization has long provided a platform for artists of many styles and genres, her exhibition, which focused on contemporary figurative art and portraiture, was the first of its kind to be displayed at the gallery space. The show presented a new frontier in the Gallery’s mission to expand and fully support each eclectic facet of the present-day art community. Through her command of both technical skill and astute and powerful insights into the psychology behind depicting the human form, this series of work by Marriage-Song had a resounding impact.
As the title of the exhibition implies, all the works featured within Modern Prometheus were created in direct response to Mary Shelley’s Gothic literary classic, “Frankenstein.” However, instead of an outright portrayal of the novel’s plot, Marriage-Song delves deep into the underlying themes found within the characters, settings, and events of the story. Her series of paintings and monoprints interpret the tale as a parable of artistic creation, the immense power yet harsh limitations artists often encounter with while making their work, and the innate, insatiable, and arguably unfulfillable desire of human beings to reflect upon, connect with, and intimately understand others and themselves.
Hyeseung Marriage-Song, “Fall of Clerval,” Oil on linen, 62” x 62”, 2019
These themes, present in all the works featured in this exhibition, are perhaps best encapsulated within her painting, “Fall of Clerval.” One of the first notable features of this portrait, as well as most of Marriage-Song’s artworks, is the limited palette. Consisting of primarily large gestural swaths of washy blues, blacks, and grays, occasional elements of earthy browns and flesh-tones, and punctuated with intense cherry red, the economy of color, in combination with the diverse handling of the brushwork, emphasizes that the paint represents a raw material. Through this simplicity, she is effectively able to liken the act of painting a portrait to fashioning a golem, an anthropomorphic being composed of clay and supernaturally imbued with life. The tale of “Frankenstein” was, at the time of its creation, a modernized retelling and reinterpretation of these creatures out of Jewish folklore and the Greek myth of Prometheus. Marriage-Song illustrates in her portraiture that the concept of the golem — derived from the primal urge to copy, reflect, and examine our existence and likeness — is timeless and ingrained deep within mankind’s psychology. For this reason, despite the prevalence and immediacy of digital images and smartphone photography, portraiture has endured as an art form. A painted portrait extends beyond the expected duplication of someone’s visage, instead becoming an entity of its own, organic and alchemic in nature. However, much like a golem or Victor Frankenstein’s monster, there is an uncontrollable and chaotic element to these creations.
Despite replicating the appearance of an individual, portraiture — in any medium and at any level of naturalism — can never be a true reflection of reality. By their very nature, portraits are composed, staged scenarios. However, they can still capture an authentic version of their subject. Instead of resisting this internal conflict within portraiture, Marriage-Song fully embraces the uneasy tension. In “Fall of Clerval,” the body of the sitter fluctuates between the tangible and the non-corporeal. Although the subject’s piercing gaze and body language convey cold, steely resolve and stoicism at first glance, the gestural exploratory under-drawings, which remain revealed, subvert this early impression. Appendages flicker in and out of the turbulent swirling background, his fingertips meld into his cigarette, bits of flesh tone hang suspended in the air, fragmented by tendrils of dripping paint. Most striking, however, is the shifting outlines of the sitter’s head. A series of sketched-on silhouettes waver and evaporate, insinuating expressions and movements that remain suggested but unrendered. This depiction works at two levels, both subtly alluding to the demise of Henry Clerval in the novel and also revealing that the sitter exists outside of this constructed moment. Just the hint of movement animates a nuance of which the viewer would otherwise be unaware, lending further complexity and pathos. Marriage-Song knows the true power of portraiture. Her portraits are more than just depictions of people, but uniquely mercurial moments and narratives solidified, combining the intimate, personalized renderings of individuals, the fleeting perspectives of the artist herself, and shared psychologies and experiences.
Hyeseung Marriage-Song, "Baltimore Superman," Oil on linen, 30 x 36 inches, 2014
Outside of the series of works featured in Modern Prometheus, Marriage-Song also incorporates similar ideas and concepts into her commissioned work and other studio practices. Elements of impermanence, fragmenting environments and perspectives, as well as narratives that extend outside the confines of the canvas can be seen within works such as “Baltimore Superman” and "RN in the Studio." Rather than attempting to control the portraits she creates through over-working their surfaces or adding artificial flourishes, she allows the artworks to exist on their own terms, as beautiful, untamed microcosms of the human condition.
Hyeseung Marriage-Song, "RN in the Studio," Oil on linen, 60 x 60 inches, 2018
In a continued tradition of Hyeseung Marriage-Song’s trailblazing endeavors within NYAEA, she is the first artist to be featured in our latest project, the Commission Studio. We encourage you to view her work and consider commissioning a portrait.
To learn more about Marriage-Song, you can also visit her New York Artist Equity Studio Breaks profile or her Artsy page.