a screening and art show with Meejin Hong opening Friday, February 16th, 5 – 8pm
Gallery hours: Saturday, February 17th and Sunday, February 18th, 12 – 6pm

Meejin Hong is an experimental animator deeply rooted in the fine arts. She thrives off of a stream of conscious brainstorming that propels her into the fantastic, more primitive side of creation. In her film Deluge (2024), she utilizes straight ahead animation to create an ever-evolving landscape where the present inevitably coexists with the past. Memories are formed, reshaped, and obliterated, relentlessly competing for space. Control is surrendered, and mistakes and second chances are embraced. It is the slow stampede of a vulnerable mind. Hong was born in Spartanburg, SC and currently resides with a creep of tortoises and other unruly creatures in Winnetka, CA. 

Deluge (2024) by Meejin Hong is an animation constructed from ink and 24 frames. 24 drawings, photographed, added to, re-photographed repeat, repeat, repeat. This cycle of drawing and photographing is repeated by Hong until she reaches complete darkness. Created out of thin black ink lines sprouting and erupting, constantly protruding and reproducing themselves. A fun-fair takes form, a parade of ghosts and whimsy. A stream of ground and bacterial swamp matter choreographed by Hong’s cunning use of movement, humor and transformation. 

Tricky twirls and balancing acts, a sinister hand encouraging us to come inside. An interior that grows deeper and further introverted. Micro organisms become increasingly clearer and in focus, each with their own schema, until consumed by itself or another matter. With each cycle of 24 frames the tricks and transgressions grow more delusional, intricately interwoven birthing new specimens and offspring. Constantly re-producing, overlapping, and developing until all we are left with is deep darkness, a very pure black. 

Meejin Hong’s latest animation leaves us in a void and that seems on the mark. Deluge can be read as a cross section of our own human condition with each layer wrecking havoc, elegantly causing chaos and catastrophe. From the bodily organisms, the body politic and the mass that is this earth. 

text by Olivia Taussig