ALICE YAELIN YANG & MARGRETHE AANESTAD: CONVERSATIONS WITH NATURE

February 3  – May 21, 2022

We are pleased to announce Conversations with Nature, an exhibition featuring Alice Yaelin Yang and Margrethe Aanestad, curated by SARAHCROWN founder Sarah Corona. The exhibition is a heartfelt gesture of human communication with nature, as it manifests itself in the cosmos. While Aanestad offers a transcendental approach to light, Yang channels emotion through landscapes. Their works, in their distinct methods and concepts of abstraction, converse with each other and what surrounds them. Conversations with Nature will run between February 3  – May 21, 2022  at 33 West 60th St.

Margrethe Aanestad, based in Stavanger, Norway, combines often soft, muted colors with abstraction in a technique both expressive and meticulous. Her watercolors and pastels are uncluttered and skillful, rapid statements of Aanestad’s “vision,” which is twofold in meaning: her artistic conception, and the sensory element of sight. Physical vision comes into play in her work as an exploration of light and space, fundamental to our being, through capturing and creating light on two dimensional surfaces. Her watercolors are bold, warm manifestations of this phenomena: visions of fire, earth, and space. In her large-scale work, cold and monochromatic at first sight, light becomes mental, visual, and gestural; they remind one of oversized watercolors, yet achieved with small strokes of chalk in an arduous process. Aanestad perceives nature stripped of all narrative elements, but leaves present the compassion.

Alice Yaelin Yang, in her first solo exhibition in New York, achieves this tenderness differently, yet equally strong. Her landscapes are refined and dreamlike, combining in another way the double meaning of vision like Aanestad: what Yang sees, and what she envisions in the “inner mind.” Similarly muted colors appear in her work, soft yellows and delicate greens, in a world without shadows. In Yang’s words, this is a way to “prevent defining only one perspective.” Thin, gentle layers of applied paint on canvas with large, clear spaces and contrasting intricate detailing open up space for imagination, the viewers’ and hers simultaneously. These landscapes evoke Cecily Brown, or even earlier works of Edvard Munch– inherently abstract, but bursting with emotion, reverie, and narrative. 

In Conversations with Nature, Yang and Aanestad both attempt to reiterate their visions of what surrounds us all, be it a meadow, a sunset, or a feeling of wonder, and their works connect to each others’ like a gaze between two humans, or a conversation with friends. Viewing them together is to alter one’s vision, and see, feel, relate to nature in connection. 

All works of art are for sale, and the proceeds will benefit the artists. For more information, please contact: info@sarahcrown.com / +1 (347) 393–4911 / www.sarahcrown.com

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Alice Yaelin Yang is an artist based in Seoul and New York. After receiving her BFA from the School of Visual Arts, Yang continues her graduate studies at Hongik University, Seoul, Korea. 

Yang’s paintings are created in order to show a world of her own. This work is not to be defined into one single concept or derived into one solid visual piece, but instead into many different aspects that touch people differently in this diverse world we  all live in. Her challenge is to make every drop of paint convey meaning. Each stroke of brush relates to the subject matter and has a special relationship to Yang herself. Even though she is inspired by the relations between human and nature, reproducing these images that already exist in real life isn’t enough for Yang to capture the essence and complexity of the inner mind.

Yang’s work has been shown around the world, including The Other Art Fair, Brooklyn, NY (2021); Hong Ik Museum of Art, Space MM, and Atelier I, Seoul, Korea; and Galerie BDMC, Paris, France.

Margrethe Aanestad (b. 1974, Stavanger, Norway) is an artist who lives and works in Stavanger, Norway. Aanestad works in drawing, painting and sculpture, and studied fine arts, art history, and art education.

In her work, she “wants to carry through a nerve, a personal presence that the viewer can experience.” Aanestad’s practice offers an experience, or contemplation, of one’s surroundings, such as calmness, silence, or chaos. It’s about eliciting a sensation that opens up for presence. In her work, steadiness, calmness or chaos and improvisation, all require presence.

Aanestad has exhibited worldwide. Her solo exhibitions include Abingdon Studios, Blackpool, UK (2019); Kunsthall Stavanger, Norway (2018); Dimensions Variable, Miami, FL (2015); and Open Source Gallery (2013) in New York, NY. She participated in group shows and art fairs in California, New York, Miami, Copenhagen, Tokyo, and multiple cities in her native Norway. In 2011 Aanestad co-funded the artist-run gallery Prosjektrom Normanns in Stavanger, which she co-directed until closing of the space in 2020.