19 October — 17 November 2007
Opening reception: Friday 19 October, 5 - 8 PM

The Andrew Bae Gallery will present recent work by painter Leeah Joo. As a visual artist, the embodiment of personal narrative has been the driving force behind her work. In her highly detailed, formalistic works, painted windows serve as portals between inner and outer space and invite the viewer to contemplate the scene momentarily retained by the two worlds' eclipse.

In Joo's most recent series, circular windows function like oversize peepholes through which we glimpse moments of the painter's life. According to Leeah Joo, a mother of two children,
the passage of time is both “anticipated and lamented” in the works, sometimes by overlapping a person's face at different points in life or by multiple stages in a child's growth existing
simultaneously within the same window's frame.

Leeah Joo's compositions are often realistically obscured, either by curtains or latticework or by distortion in the “glass” itself – obfuscations that slow the intake of a scene, drawing the eye by degrees into the depths of the painting. Occasionally Joo will superimpose her own reflection over the scene, creating an effect as though she's standing next to the viewer.

Leeah Joo was born in 1971 in Seoul, Korea and immigrated to America when she was eleven. Joo received her MFA in painting at Yale School of Art, New Haven. After her introduction at the Andrew Bae Gallery in 2005, this exhibition is Joo's second solo show before a Chicago audience. Joo will be present at the opening reception.