Exhibition: OLD TALE by Janie Korn — for Ace Artist in Residence

Ace Hotel Brooklyn and FORT MAKERS present Old Tale, a solo exhibition featuring work by New York and London based artist Janie Korn. Composed of comical carved and painted wax candles, Korn creates a miniature world that is a contemporary mashup of iconic age-old fairy tales, and the characters, objects and architecture that inhabit them. Korn sets the stage with unexpected scenes and plays out new versions of very old stories, some of which date back 6,000 years.

For Old Tale, Fort Makers invites Korn to focus her craft and knowledge of candle making to create a new link in the golden chain of folklore. Shown together as one narrative scene surrounding a central forest, her sculptures explore fundamental timeless truths as they evoke the mystery and magic of the fairy tale world. Old Tale riffs on the “same old stories” about the forces of good and evil, physical metamorphosis, and the fight for survival, and manifests how these themes are still relevant.

Janie Korn is an interdisciplinary artist, living between London, Los Angeles, and New York. Her current body of work focuses on object permanence, through the use of ephemeral materials. Her magic candles are hand-sculpted through a process of building up and chiseling down wax, and finished by painting the pieces in a molten state. She invites viewers to imagine the pieces glowing, as if providing illumination, and kinetic force, to the space.

Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Architectural Digest, Elle Decor, Vogue, among others and she’s partnered with brands such as Vans, Soho House, United Masters, and more.

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Ace Artist in Residence is the embodiment of our deep conviction that artists deliver us a critical lens through which to understand the world and ourselves. Through the program, we turn our rooms into studio spaces and invite arts organizations to take residency at the hotel and present work in The Gallery. Read all about our past residencies here. Ace Hotel Brooklyn’s partner, the multidisciplinary studio FORT MAKERS, connects creatives across disciplinary boundaries including contemporary art, furniture, stage and product design. In searching for a curated commonality across practices, FORT MAKERS creates space to discover the unexpected. Following Korn’s residency, FORT MAKERS invited interdisciplinary artists Margot Demarco, and Minjae Kim.