STELLA IM HULTBERG
“Tigers Whiskers”
Opening Reception:
Sat., Nov. 9th, 6-9 PM
Stella Im Hultberg was born in South Korea, raised in Seoul, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and later in California. She studied Industrial Design and worked as a product designer before serendipitously falling into the art world in late 2005.
Hultberg’s paintings are conceived in varying combinations of ink, watercolor, and oils on paper, wood and canvas. Her lyrical depictions of women combine decorative elements and graphic patterns, melding the figurative with the illustrative and a looser more painterly component. Ever present, this tension between the gestural and the controlled describe space in her dynamic compositions. Her palettes tend towards the monochromatic, moody and dark, but are punctuated by moments of contrast and vibrancy.
Her mannered figurative style, both elegant and selectively awkward, is at times reminiscent of early 20th century artists like Egon Schiele, Aubrey Beardsley or Gustav Klimt. Though beautiful, her figures are strangely displaced, subtly distorted, and at times melancholically encumbered with ornamentation, as seen in a recent series in which her nudes are laden with heavy blooms. Darkly beautiful, Hultberg’s feminine imaginary is an ambiguous terrain of melancholic desire.
Having grown up in Hong Kong, Korea and Taiwan, she has a diverse blend of cultural influences to pull from. After a decade in NYC, she now lives (and works) in Portland OR with her daughter and husband.
