Review by Jonathan Goodman: "The Wave" at Gallery Wave
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“The Wave” at Gallery Wave
Curated by Chunbum Park
A joint exhibition of Yellow Cat Gallery and GALLERY 60 NYC
Chunbum Park, a Korean-American painter now in his early thirties, recently curated a show featuring seven young artists (see full list of participants below) in a very small but attractive space with a pane fronting the gallery, located on 54th Street and Second Avenue. The show offered a compelling mix of abstraction that immediately captured the viewer’s attention, successfully balancing tabletop sculptures with mid-size paintings. It served as a strong example of the creativity of a generation granted extraordinary freedom, both stylistically and thematically.
This is what made the show so effective—its openness in nature. Park himself creates beautiful studies of flowers, erotic depictions of young Korean women, and outdoor scenes. One particularly striking painting he exhibited, titled Korean Anime Girl (2025), presents a seductive portrait featuring a coy head and face, along with the unclothed torso of a young woman. She has a short haircut and a single rounded white earring.
Shown in profile, the woman’s face is extremely alluring, while her slender body is painted in brilliant orange-red hues with subtle undertones of white. The image closely resembles a pin-up girl, though she is likely imaginary—as suggested by the term “anime” in the title.
On the adjacent wall is the heavily fleshed, fully exaggerated head of a hippo made of clay. Created by Dasha Bazanova in 2024, the hippo head is a wall-mounted relief extending three or four inches from the surface. Its widely spaced, humorously human-like eyes, bold snout, and grayish-green skin create a memorable impression.
Placing a beautiful woman beside a thick-skinned beast deepens the thematic complexity within the gallery’s intimate space. The contrast between the weighty mass of the hippo’s face and the sleek form of the young woman’s body creates a powerful tension. This juxtaposition might provoke discomfort or even shock in viewers, but the humor embedded in the work offers a sarcastic relief. The show seems to respond to the perceived decline of beauty in art by pairing it with grotesque elements, underscoring their coexistence.
Frank Olt presents a ceramic wall relief titled Sea of Blue (2024), featuring a tonal spectrum of blue-grays and blues ranging in darkness. The lower half of the piece contains linear swaths evoking ocean waves, ripples, and currents. Subtle variations in line and shape create a sense of movement and shimmering water. Above this, near the riverbank, pale tree trunks support three rounded forms resembling foliage. The scene flirts between the natural and the artificial. The sky, rendered as a ceiling, contains a soft haze of blue and white, with a few delicate clouds at the top. This is a sincere and graceful piece, relying on its naturalistic vision and subtle use of color.
As a whole, the exhibition may move its audience with the diversity of techniques and expressive styles demonstrated by the participating artists. The level of craftsmanship makes the viewing experience rewarding, offering insight into different cultural perspectives, representational methods, and abstract connections. The long-term impact of these works remains to be seen, but the show’s strength lies in its embrace of both tradition and innovation.
These artists’ competence highlights the main power of this compelling exhibition: a thematic range and the courage to shift between the past and yet-to-emerge styles. The future is unknown, but like the work in this memorable show, it is approached with a directness that celebrates creativity. Even when current approaches become dated, that doesn’t mean they become irrelevant. Art remains alive in relation to both its history and its future.
Participating Artists:
Frank Olt, Dasha Bazanova, David Alexander, Chunbum Park, Jeff Gomez, Mandy Henson, and Kiichi Takeuchi
April 15, 2025
— Jonathan Goodman
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