Philip Martin Gallery is proud to present "Bloom and Fade," its second solo exhibition of paintings by Korean-born, Los Angeles-based artist Sung Jik Yang. Sung Jik Yang's oil-on-canvas works picture friends, family, and the people and locations of LA's San Gabriel Valley.
Like all great portraitists, Sung Jik Yang puts the viewer in conversation with remarkable individuals. In his pictures, Yang weaves the nuance of life, presenting someone we likely have never met, and never will, figured in a calculus of observed details and gestures. The compositions of Yang's paintings are strong, the color is rich, the brushwork quick and decisive.
Yang paints his pictures in the "alla prima" style made famous by masters like Édouard Manet or John Singer Sargent, laying wet paint into wet paint, often in a single sitting. Translated from the Italian as, "at first attempt,” the dynamic initial impressions of Yang’s bold style make way for careful, unfolding interpretation. His pictures record the people of the San Gabriel Valley of Los Angeles - a highly varied, economically and socially diverse neighborhood, parts of which were devastated by the recent Eaton Fire. The majority of San Gabriel Valley residents are either immigrants or first generation Americans, regular people making their way in our country today. We see a couple expecting their first child; a young woman enjoying the shade beneath a lime tree; two adult sisters in the backyard of their parents' home.
The mood in Yang's work arises not only from how the sitters look at each other, but also how they look at us, the viewer. Pictures revealing the depth and diversity of our experience - who we really are, not what tribalism and mass media tell us about ourselves - is one of the most important tools of art-making today. Sung Jik Yang reminds us of the power of individual voice to counteract modern mass culture, its politics and representations. The sisters in one of his paintings, "Joanne and Yong," turn their faces to us, as if we have just walked up to greet them. Yang’s approach is direct, but also contemplative, leading to a series of questions as to their relation with one another, to their family and to us. What experiences have they had? What are they doing now? What does the future hold for them? Sung Jik Yang mentions that while making this work he found himself thinking about Frédéric Bazille’s monumental, psychologically insightful painting, "The Family Reunion" (1867), painted just before the Franco-Prussian War, the siege of Paris, and the upheaval of the Paris Commune.
Painting has a way of helping us think about the situations in which we find ourselves, a way of slowing down the fast pace of life, a means by which to consider what we want for ourselves, others and the societies in which we live. Sung Jik Yang sometimes paints the people in his life in his transplanted home, Los Angeles; at other times, he paints people who are unknown to him - the "chance meeting" with a stranger made famous by Charles Baudelaire and later commented on by philosophers of modern life like Walter Benjamin. Sun Jik Yang's portraits draw on the fluidity of encounter and identity, reflecting the inner complexity of his subject via deft brushwork. Like many immigrants to LA - David Hockney comes to mind - Sung Jik Yang works with the concise insight of the insider/outsider, finding in his new home a landscape of new sights and connections. Yang's paintings humanize subject and viewer, adapting the tools of the great medium as a compliment and a competitor to the new modes of address across the picture plane in the 21st-century - phones and screens - provoking thoughtful questions in the course of crafting their rich tableaus.
Sung Jik YANG (b. 1989, South Korea) received his BFA from the ArtCenter College of Design (Pasadena, CA). In 2026, Yang will be the subject of a solo exhibition at Sim Smith (London, UK). In 2024, Sung Jik Yang's work was the subject of a solo presentation at NADA New York art fair. In 2023, Yang was featured in the solo exhibition, "Paseo" (Philip Martin Gallery, Los Angeles, CA). Recent exhibitions include X Museum (Beijing, China); Flag Foundation (New York, NY); Friends Indeed Gallery (San Francisco, CA); Samuele Visentin (London, UK); 8-Bridges Gallery with Friends Indeed Gallery (San Francisco, CA); Eastern Projects (Los Angeles, CA); Space Gallery at Ayzenberg (Pasadena, CA). Yang’s work has been reviewed in such publications as Fuerteventura Times, Booooooom, and New American Paintings. Yang lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.
"Bloom and Fade" is on view April 26 - May 24, 2025, with an opening reception for the artist Saturday, April 26 from 5-8pm.
Philip Martin Gallery is open Wednesday - Saturday from 11-5. For additional images, or information please email info@philipmartingallery.com, or call 323-507-2037. Philip Martin Gallery is located at 3342 Verdugo Road, Los Angeles, CA 90065 in the Glassell Park neighborhood of Los Angeles.
