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ray hwang (b.1992 Los Angeles) is an artist currently living and working in Ridgewood, Queens in New York City.

He holds a BFA from the School of Visual Arts (New York, NY).

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My paintings are both burials and excavations created through a process of layering familiar forms and symbols using collage, airbrush, and traditional brushwork. Operating like seasoned actors in an unrehearsed play, images materialize, hide, overlap and fade away. The paintings come into existence one move at a time, each decision reacting to the last. By utilizing negative space to articulate form, I define presence through absence - memories bubble up and make themselves known, and in the end, what is left is an abstracted, unearthed emotional history of my own making.

In recent works, I’ve chosen to incorporate materials like Joss paper, a type of paper traditionally folded into currency and burned in a ritualistic manner. With its intended associations to value, destruction, and familial care, the paper serves my painting methods both aesthetically and symbolically.

The characters buried within my work often include elements like the spiky durian fruit, backscratchers, or other relics from my past that reference moments in my own history. I imagine the durian as an artifact, with its allegedly stinky yellow flesh, to allude to the treatment of Asians in America as the pandemic shifted the way we lived our lives. Along with other specific allusions, like a playground dragon sculpture, my Chinese school composition notebooks, or the arowana fish; this cast of characters are then morphed into a hazy, painterly color-scape of personal folklore that reveal how isolation, my thoughts on mortality, and the concept of home intersect throughout my life.

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Education

2016

BFA School of Visual Arts, NY

Solo & Two Person Exhibitions

2023

Lambent Fire, Latitude Gallery, New York City, NY

2022

A Summer Exhibition (2-Person Exhibition), The Yard, Brooklyn, NY

2013

i present nothing, PCC Gallery, Pasadena, CA

Group Exhibitions

2024

Hidden Encounters, The Secret Garden, Brooklyn, NY

Campfire, MyMA Online Exhibition

Ritual / Reverence, Immaterial Projects, Brooklyn, NY

2023

A Private Viewing, Charmoli Ciarmoli, New York City, NY

Age of Rat and Bear, Studio 9D, New York City, NY

The Four Horsemen, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, New York City, NY

Rasa, The Active Space, Brooklyn, NY

Middle Ground, 81 Leonard Gallery, New York City, NY

Transparent Boundaries, The Aerogramme Center x Compére Collective, Brooklyn, NY

Summer Hall, Tube Culture Hall, Pietrasanta, Italy

One to the Next, Pentimenti Gallery, Philadelphia, PA

Prelude to the Backflow, Bonian Space, Beijing, China

Come Together, LaiSun Keane Gallery, Boston, MA

And They Lived Sadly Ever After, Tube Culture Hall, Milan, Italy

Intersect Palm Springs, LaiSun Keane Gallery, Palm Springs, CA

A Peek Behind the Curtain, Bob’s Gallery, Brooklyn, NY

2022

Wet Paint, Land to Sea, Brooklyn, NY

The Art That Be, 11 Newel Gallery, Brooklyn, NY

The New Drawing Room, MassArt x SoWa, Boston, MA

Verso, Field Projects, New York City, NY

NYC Crit Club Group Exhibition, Studio 9D, New York City, NY

Three-Legged Crow, Latitude Gallery, New York City, NY

Painter’s Guild, 11 Newel Gallery, Brooklyn, NY

2021

Have You Eaten?, The Yard, Brooklyn, NY

In Close Proximity (3-Person Exhibition), LaiSun Keane Gallery, Boston, MA

HEROES, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, curated by Hannah Antalek and Jack Moore, New York City, NY

Good Bones, Ilikeyourwork Online Exhibition curated by Catherine Haggarty

Futures Ever Arriving, Chelsea Market curated by Jip Gallery, New York City, NY

Afterimage, Maake Magazine Online Exhibition curated by Alex Paik

2020

From Dark to Light, Jason McCoy Gallery, New York City, NY

Cribs, Lobo Gallery, Brooklyn, NY

Make-Shift, Olympia, New York City, NY

A place to visit, Jip Gallery x Olympia, New York City, NY

2019

My Pet’s Therapist, Tutu Gallery, Brooklyn, NY

Slide, Jip Gallery, New York City, NY

Under the Magnifying Glass, Gallery Cubed, Brooklyn, NY

IT ME, the cell, New York City, NY

In The Spirit, 68 Jay Street, Brooklyn, NY

2018

Frankly, Painting, Reis Studios, Queens, NY

Spectra, Helikon Gallery, Denver, CO

2017

Ocotillo, Stella Elkins Gallery, Philadelphia, PA

2016

Brokedown Palace, SVA Gallery, New York City, NY

2015

Crime and Punishment, SVA Gallery, New York City, NY

2014

Prints and Drawings Salon, Mehu Gallery, New York City, NY

I Live Here, Harold B. Lemmerman Gallery, Jersey City, NJ

2013

SEENOTSEEN, PCC Gallery, Pasadena, CA

61st Annual Scholarship Exhibition, PCC Gallery, Pasadena, CA

Residencies /Awards

2023

The Moosey Residency, Norwich, UK

Keyholder Residency, Lower East Side Printshop, New York City, NY

2022

Plum Lime Residency, Brooklyn, NY

2013

Jeanne Ward Foundation Art Grant, Jeanne Ward Foundation, San Marino, CA

Fine and Commercial Art Scholarship, Pasadena City College, Pasadena, CA

Press

2023

CanvasRebel, Meet Ray Hwang (interview), October 2023. (link)

CHAPTER89 Magazine, Ray Hwang (interview), April 2023. (link)

2021

Vantage Art Projects: Words and Pictures 2021 Q1, The Cracks Within Our Memories: A Visual Analysis of 5 New Works by Raymond Hwang, March 2021. (link)

2020

Full Stop Quarterly Magazine, Cover Artist, Winter 2020. (link)

Art Maze Magazine, Anniversary Issue 20, Ray Hwang (artist feature), Winter 2020. (link)

Vast Art Magazine, Issue n°01, Ray Hwang (artist feature and interview), August 2020. (link) (link)

2019

Sine Theta Magazine, “ISSUE 12 "THUNDER 雷", Raymond Hwang (artist feature), August 1, 2019. (link)

2018

DE:FORMAL, Interview with Raymond Hwang, January 18, 2018. (link)

2017

Young Space, Raymond Hwang (artist feature), December 14, 2017. (link)

Publications

2024

STRANGER, New York City, NY (link)

2023

Passing Notes Vol. 3, New York, NY (link)

ECOTONE vol. 1, Cram Books, Brooklyn, NY (link)

i forgot to draw yesterday, Cram Books, Brooklyn, NY (link)

2015

Carrier Pigeon Magazine Vol. 4 Issue 3, Guttenberg Arts, NJ (link)

Curatorial

2024

We Threw Out the Name, Studio 9D, New York City, NY

Bounce House, From Here to Sunday, Brooklyn, NY

2023

Kaharian, Irene Feleo, From Here to Sunday, Brooklyn, NY