Ethereal Gardens: Navigating Time and Desire in “Rockeries by the Garden”

Recently, from June 7 to June 23, 2024, Fengzee Yang and Jonathan Korotko presented their joint exhibition, “Rockeries by the Garden,” at Chicago Mana Contemporary. This exhibition offered a nuanced exploration of the garden as a space where art and history converge, unveiling the spiritual and cultural narratives embedded within.

As global trade and colonial expansion accelerated in 18th-century Europe, the garden emerged as a space where disparate species and cultural references were assembled under the guise of simulating nature and the world. Exotic birds, vibrant flowers, aromatic fruits, and exquisite rock formations became integral to landscape design, domesticating the foreign and inducing new fantasies through their dazzling transplants.

Fengzee Yang is a dedicated interdisciplinary artist who thoughtfully works with materials such as clay, wood, and metal. Viewing the world as both mystical and opaque, Yang explores the unknown through her object-making. She naturally incorporates both organic and inorganic forms, moments, and interactions to convey narratives of representation and self-definition. Her sculptures serve as bridges between spirituality and reality, delving into themes of longing, loss, and nostalgia. Yang earned her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been exhibited at Comfort Station Chicago, 1922 Gallery SAIC, the Plan Gallery, and various other venues. She has also been an artist-in-residence at Taoxichuan International Art Studio and Oxbow School of Art. Additionally, her work has been featured in numerous art media and publications, including Floorr Magazine, New City Magazine, Chicago Chinese Times, and others.

Fengzee Yang’s work delves into the mystical and enigmatic, using object-making to navigate the unknown. Her sculptures, blending organic and inorganic forms, craft profound stories of identity and self-exploration. They serve as bridges between the spiritual and the tangible, exploring themes of desire, loss, and nostalgia. Yang’s creative process, a meditation on absence, transforms everyday objects like empty hooks, drawers, and cradles into symbols of the voids within human experience. This approach invites viewers to see time not as linear but as a fluid continuum, engaging with landscapes that transcend specific places and moments.

Jonathan Korotko is an avant-garde artist who works with fiber in sculptural forms. He visually and critically investigates domestic interiors in terms of gendered power dynamics. Working with yarn and string, Korotko wraps objects and creates new skins for them, cloaking and distorting the often-sexualized associations of the original. Playful hand-rendered and applied surfaces create alternative imaginations of opulence and theatricality. He wants people to think about the significance of ornamentation and decoration as part of political mobilization in feminist and queer history. He received his MFA in Printmedia at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2019 and has exhibited across the United States as well as internationally. Jonathan has been an artist-in-residence at Ox-Bow School of Art and Franconia Sculpture Park, and will be a resident at PlySpace, The Studios at MASS MoCA, and Good Hart Artist Residency in 2020.

Jonathan Korotko’s work explores the history of 18th-century pleasure gardens and interiors. As global trade and colonial expansion accelerated, images of foreign animals and distant lands became integral to the era’s ornamentation. Exotic birds, vibrant flowers, and aromatic fruits entered domestic design, bringing the world into the home. Korotko investigates these spaces of pleasure in relation to desire and conquest. Using wood and fiber, he creates new images, objects, and landscapes that cloak and distort the original lustful associations. His playful, hand-rendered surfaces alternate between opulence, theatricality, desire, and fantasy.

While these histories are often examined through the lens of elite desire and global luxury markets, Korotko traces their echoes in contemporary mass culture. His sculptural forms, based on second-hand objects from eBay and flea markets, and his color palette derived from common art and craft materials, highlight how questions of cultural translation intersect with the world of the working class and amateur craftsperson. Korotko invites viewers to move beyond binary judgments, creating space for new intimacies between aesthetic idioms and cultures.

In “Rockeries by the Garden,” Yang and Korotko approach the garden as a site of artificiality and pleasure imbued with spiritual and historical narratives, reflecting the unseen forces that shape our perceptions. Their manipulation of form and material parodies 18th-century garden ideals and reconfigures the power dynamics hidden beneath its seductive facade. By cloaking and distorting images, objects, and landscapes, they challenge viewers to reconsider the desires that animate these constructed environments.

“Rockeries by the Garden” offers a platform for both contemplation and critique, fostering new connections between aesthetic languages. By integrating 18th-century garden concepts with contemporary artistic perspectives, this exhibition invites audiences to rediscover and reflect within an artistic context. The immersive experience allows visitors to explore an artful realm where fantasy and reality intersect, and where the boundaries of time and space are fluidly transcended.

Through their innovative approaches, both artists illuminate the evolving symbolism of the garden in modern art, providing a space where viewers can engage with the boundless realms of possibility and the universal human experiences of searching and longing.