Vita


1969

Born in Los Angeles with Korean decent

1993

B.A., Art,  University of California, Los Angeles

1999

M.F.A.  Pratt Institute, New York

2001

Vermont Studio Center, Full Fellowship Artist-in-Residence, Vermont

2003

Youngeun Museum of Contemporary Art, International Artist Residency, Gwangju, Korea

2004

Ssamzie Space, Artist-in-Residence, Seoul

2006

Schinkel Progressive Residency, Artist-in-Residence, Berlin


Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Artist-in-Residence, Omaha, Nebraska

2007

ARCUS Project, Artist-in-Residence, Ibaraki, Japan

2009

Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Gyeonggi Creation Center International Residency, Korea

2013

Tellus Art International Artist Residency, Goa, India



Prices and grants

2012

Britweek T4C Art Award, Los Angeles

2009

The Sovereign Foundation Asian Art Prize, Hong Kong

2007

The Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, New York

1991-1993

UCLA Lilian Levinson Art Fellowship, Los Angeles



Works in Public Collections


Santa Barbara Museum of Arts, Santa Barbara, California, USA


The Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, California, USA


Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea


Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno, Valencia, Spain


Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul


The Museum of Photography, Seoul


Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Gyeonggi, Korea


The Sovereign Art Foundation Collection, Hong Kong, China


Borusan Holding Foundation, Istanbul


Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, Nebraska


Standard Charter Bank, London



Solo exhibitions

2016

Days of Liefe, Braun-Falco Galerie, München

2015

Here and Now, Ricco Maresca Gallery, New York

2012

BEING: Debbie Han 1985-2011, Sungkok Art Museum, Seoul, Korea

2011

The Eye of Perception, Santa Monica College Pete and Susan Barrett Gallery, Santa Monica, California, USA

2010

The Eye of Perception, The Cat Street Contemporary Space, Hong Kong


The Eye of Perception, mbf-kunstprojekte (heute Braun-Falco Galerie), München


The Eye of Perception, Trunk Gallery, Seoul, Korea

2009

Hybrid Graces, LA Contemporary, Los Angeles, USA

2007

DEBBIE HAN, Galeria Punto, Valencia, Spanien

2006

Visions of Beauty, Freddie Fong Gallery, San Francisco, USA


DEBBIEHAN, Gallery Sun Contemporary, Seoul, Korea

2004

Idealistic Oddity, Brain Factory Gallery, Seoul, Korea

2002

Condom Series, Gallery 825, Los Angeles, USA

1999

Sweet World, Steuben East Gallery, New York, USA



Selected group exhibitions

2016

KENPOKU ART 2016, Ibaraki, Japan

Changwon Sculpture Biennale, Changwon, Korea


SHE: Deconstructing Female Identity, ArtsWestchester Art Center, New York


 Ladies’ Knight: A Female Perspective on Chess, World Chess Hall of Fame, St Louis

2015

The Second Nanjing International Art Festival, Nanjing, China


Ladies’ Knight: A Female Perspective on Chess, World Chess Hall of Fame, Saint Louis, Missour


Ultimate Contemporary, Phillips de Pury, London  


The 70th Independence Contemporary Art, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul

2014

Shades of Time, Queens Museum, New York

The Armory Show, New York


Private Assembly: A Contemporary Collection, Tweed Regional Gallery & Margaret Olley Art Center, Murwillumbah, Austrailia


Time for a Change, Galerie Braun Falco, Munich


Sculpture Installation, Dumbo Arts Festival, Brooklyn, New York

2013

30X: Three Decades, Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego


Wonder Works, The Cat Street Gallery, Hong Kong


Keep Our Planet Alive, Sanskruti Bhavan, Goa, India

2012

Korean Eye: Energy and Matter, The Saatchi Gallery, London


Britweek T4C Award Exhibition, Farmers and Merchant Bank, Los Angeles/

The Arch Gallery, London


Thoughts on Body, Seoul Olympic Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea


The Moment We Live In, Pin Gallery, Beijing


The International Photography Festival, Jaffa Port, Tel Aviv


The Young Masters Art Prize Shortlist Exhibition, Sphinx Gallery, London

2011

Elegance and Grace, Ewha Women’s University Museum, Seoul


New Acquisition, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Gwachun, Korea


Farrango 2011, mbf-kunstprojekte, Munich


Scope Basel, Basel

2010

Everyday Realities, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara


The Lamp of the East, Lalit Kala Academi, Mumbai


Remind, Youngeun Museum of Contemporary Art, Gwangju, Korea


The Sovereign Asian Art Prize Finalists Exhibition, The Rotunda Gallery,

Hong Kong

Forming a Language of Art, The Sotheby’s, Tel Aviv

2009

Moon Generation, Saatchi Gallery, London


Cluster, Barbara Davis Gallery, Houston


Dissonant Visions, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul


New Digital Age, Novosibirsk State Art Museum, Novosibirsk, Russia


The Body Speaks, TouchART Gallery, Heiri Art Valley










Debbie Han

Lives and works in Los Angeles, USA

DEBBIE HAN


Days of Life III, 2016

Acrylic on canvas, 102x76.2 cm


Debbie Han has been exploring over the past decade the interaction of individual experiences with social relationships in contemporary culture. She is using a broad range of media ranging from photography, sculpture, installation to painting. In the past, Debbie Han received much attention for her ‘Graces’ series which challenges the Eurocentric standard of beauty by photographing bodies of actual, present-day Asian women and combining them with prototypical western classical heads. An intensive digital work was applied to produce the marble-like, polished skin texture, which further intensifies their illusive power of these figures. These hybrid figures provoke many critical issues from art history, social values, interracial relations, to contemporary social challenges.

In her new body of work she moved back to painting creating a matrix of faces with myriad expressions embodying the individual experience of living through the vicissitudes of life.

In the series entitled “Now,” Han painted her emotional status day by day over a monthly period on a single canvas by squeezing the paint tube directly onto the canvas, allowing a quick, spontaneous gesture to depict her mood each day in an iconographic way. The accumulated mass of different facial expressions simultaneously captured a personal history of the moments in time as well as archetypal human expressions as a whole.

On the other hand, the “Days of Life” series depicts panoramic masses of faces with diverse expressions rendered in white, red and other colors, all having incorporated aspects of figuration and abstraction symbolically to express the interconnectedness of people’s lives. They reflect in essence the symbiotic relationship between the individual and modern society. Adopting the iconic symbolism of “emoticons” from contemporary virtual culture, these faces become eerie phantoms evoking primal human states. Their intricate, web-like relationship implies at the same time the connection between the micro and macro world of people and society. They ultimately address human emotions as the converging experience of human life at its core within the seeming complexities of contemporary societies.

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