[Gallery Walk] Canvas Experiments by 7 Mid-Career Artists 'Facing Worlds'

Kumho Museum of Art 'Facing Worlds: Inside and Outside Landscapes' Exhibition
Highlighting Painting Works of 7 Mid-Career Artists, Until February 4, 2024

"In today's art world, where expanded media and works beyond traditional formats are pouring out, we planned this exhibition to explore the possibilities of how much can be expressed and experimented with using only rectangular canvas works."

Doseongwook_Emotion-Light, 2022, [Photo by Kumho Museum of Art]

The special exhibition "Surreal Encounter: Across the Realms," which showcases the essence of painting by seven mid-career artists representing the Korean art scene, will be held at Kumho Museum of Art in Sagan-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul, until February 4, 2024.

Artists Do Seongwook, Song Eunyoung, Shin Seonju, Yoo Hyunmi, Yoon Jungseon, Lee Manna, and Jeong Boyoung present diverse works that awaken new senses and expand perceptions of time and space by confronting familiar yet unfamiliar scenes?from urban and natural landscapes and everyday views to surreal spaces that transcend reality and fantasy. The exhibition features a total of 83 works, including paintings and photographs created by the seven artists.

Kang Jeongha, senior curator at Kumho Museum of Art and planner of the exhibition, explains the concept: "We aimed to provide a time to awaken new senses and expand perceptions of time and space by confronting familiar yet unfamiliar scenes?from poetry and nature, everyday landscapes to surreal spaces that transcend reality and fantasy."

Sinsunju, ON (Grand Central Terminal), 2023
[Photo courtesy of Kumho Museum of Art]

Yoon Jungseon captures lingering memories in the streets and neighborhood scenes she walks daily on canvas, while Shin Seonju infuses time and history into striking black-and-white architectural landscapes. Through a meticulous process of spreading black oil pastel by hand on canvas and then scraping it thinly with an awl or wooden spatula, the landscapes created resemble black-and-white photographs.

Do Seongwook creates a fantastic forest space to visualize intangible elements such as light and air. At first glance, it looks like a photograph of a forest, but it is a sophisticated painting that uses the forest as both material and medium to maximize the expression of light. After a long rehabilitation due to an accident, the artist held a solo exhibition last year for the first time in ten years and has recently resumed working, presenting inner natural landscapes themed on light to the audience.

Song Eun-young, 51 (Turquoise-colored wall), 2019 [Photo courtesy of Kumho Museum of Art]

Jeong Boyoung traces subtle flows and traces of light at the boundary between the inside and outside of buildings, while Song Eunyoung explores the relationships between images that invade each other's boundaries, focusing on indoor spaces and breaking away from the principles of perspective and visual perception. The artist paints landscapes where heterogeneous elements such as reality and unreality, inside and outside, front and back coexist in one space. Using everyday scenes seen during her studies in France, favorite movie scenes, and images she collected herself as materials, she creates new spaces by breaking away from perspective with protruding and tilted forms.

Imanna_Variable Landscape, 2022, [Photo courtesy of Kumho Museum of Art]

Lee Manna realistically depicts overlooked urban backgrounds, and Yoo Hyunmi shows how text can be expressed as images within the painting space, starting from an autobiographical novel. The self-written novel "Jeok" (敵) is a work depicting events that unfold as an artist, who fails to attract attention in the exhibition, gradually becomes dependent on the only fan who recognizes her. It contains the artist's fear of self-replication experienced during the creative process.

The seven artists interpret and digest various landscapes in their own ways. Although gathered in one space, their works collectively form a small world from a macro perspective.

Born in the 1960s and 1970s, these artists have walked their own paths for a long time, building unique artistic worlds. While the exhibition mainly features recent works, early pieces are also displayed to allow viewers to observe each artist's distinctive working tendencies and developmental flow, which is another noteworthy aspect.

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