EXHIBIT REVIEW: IN GRAY: Soomin Ham at Multiple Exposures Gallery by Louis Jacobson

Anyone who knows Soomin Ham’s photographic work over the past decade will recognize familiar methodological and narrative elements in her new exhibit at Multiple Exposures Gallery, IN GRAY. As the exhibit’s title indicates, Ham often uses subtle shades of gray to embody her hazy memories. Ham is originally from Seoul, and her current exhibit traces her experiences moving between Korea and the United States. The exhibit is divided into several parts. “East and West” includes works that pair equally sized squares of light and dark that feature subtly rendered trees, a motif she returns often to as an expression of rootedness. “Window” tweaks this approach by reducing the black portions to a fraction of the size of the white wholes. Meanwhile, Ham’s “Diptych” series offers a selection of more traditional black-and-white photographs, many of them pairings of branches and windows portrayed in light and shadow. Finally, “Recollections” includes a variety of landscapes, including a wide panorama of an icy road split into three parts. Notably, Ham’s diptychs pair an image from the U.S. with one from Korea; the physical gap between them, she says, represents how she feels at home in both places, yet fully in neither. As she’s done in her previous works, Ham dwells on how memory can “overlap, fragment, disappear and reappear.” IN GRAY runs through Oct. 11 at Multiple Exposures Gallery at the Torpedo Factory Art Center, 105 N. Union St., Alexandria. multipleexposuresgallery.com. Free. —Louis Jacobson