“Echo,” Detail, 20” x 16.5” x 1.5” (framed), archival ink on cut paper, 2024

The Diviner Series, a solo exhibition of new constructed drawings and prints by Dodd Professor Imi Hwangbo, will be shown at the Ellen Miller Gallery in Boston from November 28 – December 21, 2024. Hwangbo’s delicate reliefs carve two dimensional patterns, creating lines with edges, and shapes with negative space. Trained as a sculptor, Hwangbo’s practice combines image, object, and material. Her work recalls the traditional Korean art of pojagi: four-cornered wrapping cloths embroidered with patterns which reference Korean folk beliefs. Hwangbo’s patterns begin as hand-drawn shapes, which she develops with layers of cut paper. The completed artworks create depth with layered apertures and overlapping edges. The Diviner Series explores the boundaries between the real and imagined. Ever-present is the concept of infinity, implicit in her repeating patterns.

The Ellen Miller Gallery is a leading contemporary art gallery in Boston. The gallery is located in a premier space in the SoWA section of the South End. The gallery focuses primarily on mid and late career artists working with innovative materials and addressing societal themes. As curator and critic Lilly Wei has written, “Hwangbo’s practice reflects aspects of her generation’s artmaking, at ease with technology, instantaneity and constant change yet seeking their opposite in the hand-crafted, the slowed down, the essential. Hwangbo’s incremental, extravagantly refined, labor-intensive production is a canny reformulation of what drawing can be today.”

Imi Hwangbo received her MFA from Stanford University. She has been the recipient of numerous artist fellowships, with residencies at the American Academy in Rome, the Camargo Foundation in France, Yaddo, and the MacDowell Colony. Her work has been acquired by major corporations including Fidelity Investments, the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, and the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong. Her work in constructed drawing has been exhibited at Art on Paper, the Volta Art Fair, the International Print Center, and Pavel Zoubok Gallery in New York City. Her work has been included in the “Women to Watch” biennial exhibition sponsored by the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. Group shows include exhibitions at the Jepson Center for the Arts, the Bell Gallery of Brown University, the Weatherspoon Art Museum, and the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center. Articles and reviews of her work have appeared in The Huffington Post, Art in America, Sculpture Magazine, The Boston Globe, the Washington Post, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She is a Professor of Art at the Lamar Dodd School of Art.