Suha Sin, Threshold - The edge of time, 2002. Mixed media, 24" x22".

When you first walk into Hun Gallery the giant windows that overlook West 33^rd Street appear like some ethereal stage production. The space, which features a large main gallery and an adjacent smaller gallery, is in an especially auspicious location in midtown Manhattan. From its opening in July 2005, the gallery, run by artist and curator Ji-Hun Lee, has evoked challenging work in its selection of established and emerging artists that range from local to international artists. Recent exhibitions have engaged in a East/West dialogue which have included "Between East and West," and "Invitation Exhibitions" on photography and contemporary Korean art.

The year-ending 2005 exhibit, "Promise," curated by Lee and Yuri Psinakis, a reunion of a show curated by Psinakis in San Francisco in 2004, is a group exhibition featuring seven California-based artists: Kenton Parker, Robert Sean Coons, co-curator Yuri Psinakis, Francis Berry, Suha Sin, Francis Baker and Robert Larson. The artists represent a range of different media from Sin’s beautiful mixed media compositions, which are sculpture paintings that encompass chairs and numbers, to by Kenton Parker’s clubhouse that enacts childhood and adult fantasy.

Parker’s piece, in the smaller gallery, is a popular entryway into the imagination that allows the audience to take aim with a metaphorical gun at childhood anxiety. An effective use of space that underscores and riffs off the others’ pieces, which are arranged in a somewhat whimsical yet sublimely serious display.

Capitalism in its most schizophrenic waste is the subject of Robert Larson’s amusing and intense work. His piece, Rectangles and Squares, builds off the discarded elements of society. In this instance, cigarette packages, using an encaustic method on linen and canvas, become heightened assemblages of art.

As globalization, commerce, nationality, and identity issues configure our existence, Hun Gallery is a credible response.