Asia Week New York Contemporary will feature work from China, Korea, Japan and India. - By Virginia Blackburn

The inaugural Asia Week New York Contemporary arrives on May 2-10, featuring seven galleries showcasing the work of artists from China, Korea, Japan and India. Taking place at venues across Manhattan, the pieces on show will straddle conventional media such as oil paintings, take in sculpture and installations, and push into more unusual terrain with deconstructed ceramics and, in the case of South Korea’s Seungmo Park, stainless-steel mesh, as in his Maya 7616 on show with Kang Contemporary.

AROUND TOWN

Glimmering Treasures From the Other Side of the World
Asia Week New York

Over the next several days, until March 18, Asian art on view at Manhattan galleries and auction previews will offer some welcome doses of glitter and lightheartedness and unexpected juxtapositions of materials. Kang Collection Korean Art has hung Jongsook Kim’s contemporary canvases, with landscape contours based on traditional paintings and fashioned from Swarovski crystals.  EVE M. KAHN

By Charlotte Jansen

The floating installation by Ik-Joong Kang, part of the Totally Thames festival that opens on Thursday, is a seven-metre-high illuminated cube constructed from hundreds of 70 x 70cm drawings, which were transferred from palm-sized sketches on Korean rice paper.

All the participants fled the North during the Korean war, which ended in 1953 in an armistice, not a peace agreement. The two countries have technically remained at war ever since, and many of the North Koreans who fled have been permanently separated from their loved ones since, forced to build a new life after the border was effectively sealed.

Asia Week New York 2015 is a non-stop week of Asian art exhibitions, auctions, and events throughout the New York metropolitan area from March 13–21.

Asia Week New York 2015 includes exhibitions from 42 leading international Asian art specialists. Hailing from Belgium, England, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Switzerland, and the United States, this group of top-tier dealers represents a rich and diverse range of specialties, presenting ancient through contemporary works of art from China, India, Southeast Asia, the Himalayas, Japan, and Korea.

New York dealer specializing in Korean art is Kang Collection (9 East 82nd Street), with an exhibition of very recent work by Ik-Joong Kang, a contemporary artist whose panels made of pine and liquid plastic — a kind of simulated lacquer — feature traditional motifs like moon jars used in courts for storing wine and panels that mimic bamboo.

Ik-Joong Kang's "Moon Jar With Blue Dot" was featured during Asia Week New York in March 2014