MIMI JUNG | WALL STREET JOURNAL MAGAZINE | ARTICLE

Sarah Medford, Wall Street Journal Magazine, April 19, 2016

Mimi Jung’s Art Lands at NYC’s Chamber Gallery

The artist will debut her largest work to date this month at Manhattan’s Chamber gallery

 

Artist Mimi Jung came to weaving less than five years ago, but she’s wasted no time in redefining the practice for her own expressive ends. Like Rosemarie Trockel, Sheila Hicks and Pae White, Jung uses fiber as a wildly associative and intimate material language—one she articulates in myriad forms, from compact hangings of wool or cotton to wall-size stretches of ombré mohair. This month, a teahouse laced together from gray and white polymer cord on a wood frame will beckon from inside Manhattan’s Chamber gallery as part of its multi-artist summer exhibition, Progressland. Jung’s largest work to date, the cylindrical, seven-foot-wide structure will offer visitors a shifting sense of privacy and personal reflection as the walls vary in transparency. “My work is based on the idea of finding solace and power in introversion,” says the Los Angeles–based artist, who also shows with Gallery Diet in Miami and Les Gens Heureux in Copenhagen. Looking for a new medium that wouldn’t require costly equipment, Jung, 34, transitioned to weaving from digital installation. Though handwork has its drawbacks—“it can be incredibly time-consuming to realize an idea to scale,” Jung admits—she still finds the process full of discovery. “With every mistake comes a new direction.”

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