PYO GALLERY LA is pleased to announce our upcoming exhibition Dream A Dream, featuring the provocative work of three contemporary photographers: Los Angeles based photographers Ann Mitchell, Aline Smithson and Seung-won Won, based in Seoul. The show opens on June 29 and will continue through July 27. A reception for the artists will be held on June 29, 6-8 pm.

 

The selected artists in this exhibition work with dream states to address issues of identity, trauma and transcendence such as in psychoanalytic literature. Their illusions originate from the unconscious, to reveal individual psychic states.

 

Ann Mitchell’s new body of work arose from a traumatic experience that offered a substantial breakthrough, her nightmares transformed into greater awareness. She writes of her work:“We build a vision in our mind of what our life is, and will be, but the truth is life is more about change and making peace with that idea is what this series of constructed images seeks to

explore. With each image I'm pushing into the feelings that we experience when life changes radically. Fear, happiness, confusion, insight, joy...all of these are on the path we take.”

 

Aline Smithson, a veteran photographer, teacher and critic will exhibit one of her most acclaimed series; Portrait of The Photographers Mother, an appropriation of James McNeill Whistler’s famous painting, Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1 composed using her beloved 85-year old mother as model. The lighthearted series investigates identity through characters that create a theatrical persona, a transparent mask that reveals her underlying affinity to make what is old, new again.

 

Seung-won Won creates work obsessed with space and possibility. The real and imagined worlds she dreams of are placed side by side in her idyllic landscapes. Each photograph consists of over three hundred individual images that are seamlessly collaged together. Seung-won studied in Dusseldorf within a confined 2 x 18 foot square room. It was there that she developed a desire to shape the spaces that currently inform her allegorical compositions.

 

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Sarah Lee, a gallerist and independent curator who works in Santa Monica, CA curated this exhibition.