Inviting You to a Time Where Coolness Lasts Forever

Kumho Art Museum Photographers Han Seongpil and Im Junyoung Invitational Exhibition
Exploring Virtual and Reality Through Reproduction and Illusion, Broadly Addressing Themes of Humans and the Earth's Environment
Dynamic Images of People in the City Expressed Through Water Streams, Offering a Refreshing Sensation

Hansungpil, Ground Cloud 052, 2015, C-print, 120x180cm. Photo by Kumho Museum of Art

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Heeyoon] "What exactly are we looking at?"

Quiet and cool photographs that soothe the heat of a hot summer day amid heatwaves and rain forecasts welcome the audience. Kumho Museum of Art in Samcheong-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul, is hosting a solo exhibition by photographer Han Seongpil titled 'Inverted Surfaces' from the 5th through October 23.

The artist addresses broad themes ranging from nature and humans to civilization and the global environment through reproduction and illusion. The 'Facade' series, which reveals the boundary between virtual and real by installing printed temporary screens in front of restoration sites of buildings in various cities worldwide and photographing them, poses the question to viewers: what exactly are we seeing?

Im Junyoung. The Dominion of Light, 2006, C-print, 147x117cm. Photo by Kumho Museum of Art

The artist explains that he found a clue about the reproduction of images when he saw a large screen in front of St. Paul's Cathedral in London, England, which was under restoration, displaying the cathedral’s original design. This experience led him to travel around the world capturing facades and building murals known as 'Trompe-l’oeil' with his camera. The images on the screens in the photographs at first glance look like the actual buildings. The mysterious dawn sky blue created by the mix of natural light and street lamps produces a picturesque scene. In this way, two contrasting elements coexist in one frame, subtly blurring the boundaries between concepts and continuously questioning whether what we see is actuality or reality.

The 'Polar Heir' series, featuring the Arctic Ocean and the Canadian Rocky Mountains, evokes awe through cool and vast natural landscapes, but at the same time candidly captures climate issues through the rapidly melting glaciers caused by overdevelopment. After years of research, the artist traveled to polar regions with his camera, capturing melting glaciers and former industrial areas from various perspectives.

Hansungpil, Weight of Time XI, 2017, C-print, 2017. Photo by Kumho Museum of Art

The large-scale photographic works that dominate the exhibition space depict the transcendent nature of primordial landscapes as well as the history of resource development and traces of nature exploitation over centuries. By capturing the sublime grandeur of nature alongside the reality of environmental issues in a single frame, the artist leads viewers to reflect on humanity’s impact on the global environment.

The concurrently held solo exhibition by photographer Lim Junyoung, 'Beyond That, Always Steps to Nature,' expresses the bustling movement of people in a vast city as a dynamic stream of water, offering a refreshing sensation.

The artist says that one day in downtown New York, the sight of people pouring onto the streets at rush hour looked like water gushing from a pipe. To visually realize this impression, he first photographed urban scenes of major cities like New York and Seoul, then meticulously retouched and composited the water streams. The completed 'Like Water' series dynamically expresses human vitality driving the metropolis through the harmony of geometric buildings and organic water forms.

Junyong Lim, Museum project 10, 2008+2022, archival pigment print, 40x40cm. Photo by Kumho Museum of Art

The newly presented 'Museum Project' series in this exhibition features photographs taken inside the American Museum of Natural History in New York, capturing people gazing at nature objectified beyond glass windows, turning them into objects of contemplation. Although the specimens are made to look more real than actual nature, the blurred deer specimen behind a stained glass window and the orderly landscapes soon remind viewers that the scene before their eyes is fiction. Through the three-dimensionally arranged works, visitors stroll among the pieces, creating a scene of appreciating pseudo-nature within the city. Amid the artist’s works depicting constructed nature, the audience becomes part of this artificial landscape. The exhibition runs until October 23 at Kumho Museum of Art in Samcheong-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.