About the artists:

Samantha Harrison and Jeongmin Ahn are recent graduates of Emily Carr University of Art + Design, having both received a BFA. They both live on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples, the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō and
Səl.\ lwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations, in Vancouver BC. Their work consists primarily of oil paintings featuring still lifes, or the human figure, painted representationally.

Artist Statement

These paintings are from three bodies of work exploring the ability of Hyperrealism in lending power to imagery. Some of these paintings are a part of Jeongmin’s Trash series, a body of work that explores the effect of human behaviour and consumerism on the ecosystem. In these images Jeongmin has rendered and elevated articles of trash, and items with excessive packaging, simultaneously beautifying and questioning the objects’ ecological implications. These paintings, like consumerism, attempt to confuse the viewer’s perception the of value. Other paintings involved in this exhibition belong to Samantha’s Pareidolia series, where she searches for the natural within the artificial and the controlled, and to the Brass Tea Set series. The paintings belonging to the Brass Tea Set series were created in the interest of detailing the minor deviations and exaggerations that always arise even when an attempt is made to paint photographically. These minor deviations hint at the limit of perception, while the final work simultaneously exalts the ability to transcribe images, and honour that which is visually pleasing. These still life paintings when exhibited together have been titled Still Alive, which is meant to comment on the continued existence of Hyperrealist painting and traditional still-life paintings, which are less popular in modern art academia, and also on the fact that the ecosystem and human societies – despite our destructive ways and the devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic – are Still, in fact, Alive.