While the landscapes in Annette Hur’s newest paintings have grown increasingly abstract they remain resolutely autobiographical.

 

Horizon lines become a fading boundary. Sky, earth, and water blur. Forms from the natural world are discernible, yet move in and out of focus. Dichotomies abound. They alternate between feeling serene and agitated. Layers of vibrant, at times violent, hues of colors and lush, determined brushstrokes give the surfaces a feeling of churning, of perpetual motion.

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Hur creates these landscapes that are both familiar, yet alien, as pockets outside of regular life to give distance for reflection and consideration. Space, time, and memory are compressed. The shifting and amorphous environments visualizing how past and present coexist. Water is frequently the central element. Forever unfixed, moving and flowing, inherently flexible in filling given spaces, shifting to move forward around obstacles. These ideas of fluidity and relentlessly evolving circumstances become essential for Hur’s examinations of her own turbulent personal history.

 

The urge for release from past traumas forever conflicting with a yearning for home and the loved ones who are no longer with her. Her ever evolving identity as a female immigrant navigating two cultures having passages of joy tempered by longing and nostalgia. She contemplates the densely woven net of interconnected events and individuals that become scaffolding by which we see our place in the world.Through depictions of psychological states rather than narrative details Hur looks at the collisions of failures and success, good and bad decisions made during usually nebulous circumstances. These choices accumulating over time, the need to keep making them persistent and unabated.

 

The freedom to have these ruminations is itself something worthy of celebrating. Hur’s paintings have a balanced clarity of vision, but they ultimately revel in a shifted worldview, from static and unchangeable, to open, indeterminate, boundless. “Beauty is owed to duration, to a contemplative synopsis… It consists of temporal sedimentations emitting a phosphorescent glow.” - Byung-Chul Han, The Scent of Time: A Philosophical Essay on the Art of Lingering

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Hur was born in South Korea and currently lives and works in Brooklyn. Recent exhibitions include solo/group exhibitions at Chart, RegularNormal, Hesse Flatow, Ross + Kramer, Assembly Room, Wallach Gallery, The Korea Society, Gavin Brown Enterprise, Urban Zen, Times Square Space in New York; Long Story Short and Helen J in Los Angeles; Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey; West Chester University in Pennsylvania; Heaven Gallery, Devening Projects, Chicago Artists Coalition, Boundary in Chicago; Stems Gallery in Paris; Unit in London; EM gallery, Gana Art in Korea. Hur’s work was featured in Maake Magazine, Two Coats of Paint, Friend of The Artist Volume 11, Create! Magazine, Mint Tea, Art & Object, New American Paintings, Bad at Sports, Third Coast Review, NewCity Art, ADF Magazine, Naeil News, The preview, Sisa today. Hur holds a BA from Ewha Women's University (2008), BFA (2015) from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and MFA (2019) from Columbia University.