[Exhibition of the Week] Edmond Brooks-Beckman Exhibition · Goryeomyeong Solo Exhibition 'THE PODO' etc.

Editor's NoteThis week's exhibitions introduce a variety of attractive shows from across the country that can be experienced over the course of one week.

▲Edmund Brooks-Beckman 'Into the clamour of words' = Gallery Duarte Square presents the first Seoul exhibition of British artist Edmund Brooks-Beckman. This exhibition introduces a new series of paintings titled 'palimpsests'?works created by painting over original content?that offer a glimpse into the artist's techniques of overpainting, sculpting, and cutting, capturing the delicate balance between creation and extinction.

Through layers of thickly applied oil paint and evolving visual language woven into symbols, the artist explores family history, personal experiences, and contemporary consciousness. The exhibition is a collection of works that do not adhere to a single theme or message but serve as evidence of the artist's efforts to create language emerging from intuition.

I sang the sounds with no notion of its meaning? Oil on canvas 170 x 190 cm 2023
Photo by Duarte Sequeira

He explains that although he began painting as a fan who admired other artists' works and as a collector of their traces, he never imagined he could speak directly through their tongues or leave marks through their touch. The works presented this time are described as "an attempt to form his own linguistic gestures."

The works in the exhibition rely instinctively on the act of making marks, but they were not created with closed eyes and complete surrender. The artist created a series of symbols suited to conditions where his body could intuitively respond to the materials. One of these conditions arose from a significant change in his perception of the land.

The artist says he came to view the land as an object, particularly as the Jewish scroll and prayer box called ‘Tefillin.’ In this new context, he elaborates that the relationship between marks and himself takes on characteristics similar to writing on parchment-like surfaces or engraving on plaques, where words and numbers combine material and subject. The exhibition runs until March 9 at Gallery Duarte Square, 52-gil Dosan-daero, Gangnam-gu, Seoul.

Podo 20231015 01 [Photo by Geumsan Gallery]

▲Goryeo Myung Solo Exhibition 'THE PODO' = Geumsan Window Gallery opens its first exhibition of the year with Goryeo Myung's solo show 'THE PODO.' This exhibition presents eight of the artist's latest works using grapes as the subject. The artist analogously captures close-up photographs of grapes and enlarges them to pursue the essence of the subject while capturing fundamental beauty. Through viewing these uniquely charming photographs, visitors can wish for a prosperous and abundant new year.

Graduated from the Sp?os Photography School in Paris, France, and actively working both in Paris and internationally, the artist uses traditional photographic techniques to capture objects and employs printing methods that emphasize lines to achieve maximum visibility, resulting in hyperrealistic photographs. Using a large German camera loaded with special Israeli space observation film, the photographs clearly show the powder on the shiny grape surfaces and even the wrinkles.

Podo [Photo by Geumsan Gallery]

This explains why each grape in the works has a different expression, and the diverse grapes vividly reveal changes in texture over time. The gold leaf embroidered on the dark black grapes contains the spirit and values derived from Buddhist paintings. Grapes have long been depicted as emblems of life, abundance, and cultural prosperity across East and West, often used as decorative motifs or subjects in artworks because grapes carry auspicious meanings. The countless grapes in a single bunch symbolize the prosperity of descendants.

The exhibition presents eight photographic works through which the artist hopes viewers will feel the beauty conveyed by the energy and vitality contained within the works, without any suggestion or imposition. The small objects, only palm-sized, are printed in enormous forms before the eyes, offering viewers a sense of estrangement and a unique shock. The exhibition runs until the 22nd at Geumsan Window Gallery, Sogong-ro, Jung-gu, Seoul.

Still life for objects to be sent, Mourning 01, 134x104cm, Archival pigment print, 2022 [Photo by Lookinside Gallery]

▲Park Mi-jung Solo Exhibition 'Still Life for Things to be Sent Off, Mourning' = Look Inside Gallery hosts Park Mi-jung's solo exhibition 'Still Life for Things to be Sent Off, Mourning.' In this exhibition, the artist presents photographic works arranging discarded objects such as brick fragments, wood pieces, light bulbs, disposable plastic coffee cups, egg cartons, scrubbers, plastic or strings, and paper flowers cut with scissors.

"It began as a beautiful elegy for things easily consumed and discarded in our daily lives?objects once cherished but forgotten and vanished after their use was fulfilled," the artist explains as the motif of her work. Recalling childhood memories of playing with paper dolls, cutting paper clothes with scissors, combining and dressing them, and imagining how to decorate the dolls prettily, the artist confesses that through this work, by touching and arranging the shapes of flowers transferred onto lifeless paper alongside objects that have lost their purpose, she wanted to beautifully adorn and mourn these soon-to-disappear, used-up objects and preserve them forever in photographs.

Still life for objects to be sent, Mourning 22, 70x55cm, Archival pigment print, 2023 [Photo provided by Lookinside Gallery]

Professor Park Young-taek of Kyonggi University writes in the exhibition preface, "The artist sought to breathe life into discarded objects. Thus, trivial and shabby things gathered to create a blooming flower-like form. Debris from construction sites or things excluded from human practical use coincidentally come together to shine as a pinnacle of strange beauty."

He adds, "It reminds us anew that the meaning of all objects' existence depends on the present being who seeks to understand them, and that objects are not bound to fixed meanings but are reborn anew at every moment as their reason for existence lies in the very moment they are used."

The artist describes this work as "a slow journey of my senses between before and after use, reality and representation, illusion and manifestation." Through mourning objects, she emphasizes that just as human life is finite, objects are not eternal either. The exhibition runs until the 22nd at Look Inside Gallery, 17-gil Dosan-daero, Gangnam-gu, Seoul.

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