Hwang and Dym at Mission 17 (SF)

Note: This exhibit has been extended through 5/13/07. The gallery will be open extra hours on the final weekend.

The non-profit Mission 17 is presenting “Blabbable Doodads,” an exhibit of two artists, Eunjung Hwang and Miriam Dym. Both artists create fragmented, invented worlds—Hwang with video animations and prints, and Dym with an installation (detail above). The curators of this show, Taro Hattori and Mayumi Hamanaka, have cleverly provided a sculptural setting for the videos, projecting them next to styrofoam brickwork. Otherwise the projections might have seemed flat in a space that includes Dym's 3D collage of disparate forms.

Hwang has been making terrific animations, and I recommend that visitors allow time to watch them at some length. Her form might be described as the non-narrative story: images come and go, transforming constantly in highly imaginative ways, while surfing a line of dark humor. The animations enter your mind at a non-verbal level that can make your adult apparatus feel like the armor it is. Below are three images from the work on view.