The exhibit, featuring exquisite imagery, opens at the Fitchburg Art Museum
Korean painter YoAhn Han, currently based in Boston, will showcase his work at the Fitchburg Art Museum, highlighting selections. The exhibition, “In Search of Floral Bodies,” runs from Jan. 15 through June 5. The pieces on display draw from the environment of his childhood in South Korea, interwoven with present day experiences. His mixed media compositions have been called “lyrical,” and he creates his work by dying, tracing, and extricating synthetic materials. Describing Han’s process, the museum’s website explains, “They are then placed within watercolor and gouache paintings and finished with a coating of glossy varnish.” The site goes on to explain the feelings that Han’s art evokes:
“As he considers the dynamics of his multifaceted identity, Han’s floral shapes transform into ethereal figural poses that consider beauty, death, desire, transgression, and being.”
According to Han’s website, his work is “a visual dialogue between suppression and desire, a duality which speaks to both his experience of cerebral arteriovenous malformation and to his bifurcated cultural identity.” He received his MFA 2D from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and he obtained a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has also been an instructor at the Museum of Fine Arts.
Shira Laucharoen is a reporter based in Boston. She currently serves as the assistant director of the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. In the past she has written for Sampan newspaper, The Somerville Times, Scout Magazine, Boston Magazine, and WBUR.