[Exhibition of the Week] Thomas Loof 'd.o.pe.' · Group Exhibition of 3 'Personal Gesture' and More

▲Thomas Ruff Solo Exhibition 'd.o.pe.' = PKM Gallery opens the door to its 2024 exhibitions with a solo exhibition by the contemporary photography master Thomas Ruff titled 'd.o.pe.' This solo exhibition, held in Korea for the first time in 20 years, will showcase the artist's latest photo series bearing the same name as the exhibition, revealed for the first time in Asia.

Thomas Ruff, d.o.pe.08, 2022. [Photo by PKM Gallery]

The 'd.o.pe.' 2022 series introduced in this exhibition is a photographic series by Ruff based on fractal structures, where self-similar units unfold on a massive tapestry screen measuring up to 290cm in length. The title 'd.o.pe.' is inspired by Aldous Huxley’s 'The Doors of Perception' (1954). In this autobiographical essay, Huxley defined that humans can expand consciousness and transcend themselves through chemical or biological reactions.

Ruff aligns with Huxley’s ideas and projects fractal structures, found both in nature and artificially, into his work in psychedelic forms. The distinction between real reality and constructed reality becomes meaningless, allowing viewers to experience visual transcendence within.

Thomas Ruff, d.o.pe.15, 2023. [Photo by PKM Gallery]

The German artist began gaining recognition in the late 1980s as a key member of the D?sseldorf Becher School of Photography. To date, he has released about 25 photographic series, including his representative works 'Portr?ts,' 'Nudes,' and 'Substrate.' Positioned at the center of the transition from analog to digital, his 40-year oeuvre continuously explores and challenges new photographic technologies and concepts, paralleling the history of photography in the 20th and 21st centuries.

From classical portrait photography to images collected and edited from internet data, shapes transmitted from satellites, and algorithmically generated digital images, his highly sensitive photographic work expands our perspective and consistently attracts international attention. The exhibition runs until March 13 at PKM Gallery, Samcheong-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul.

Kim Minsu, My Dad and My Sister, 2023, Acrylic on canvas, 112.1 x 145.5cm
[Photo by Phoebe Gallery]

▲Group Exhibition 'Personal Gestures' = Phoebe Gallery will hold the curated exhibition 'Personal Gestures' starting from the 22nd. The exhibition is a group show featuring three actively working young artists?Kim Hanna, Ham Mina, and Kim Minsu. Through the works of these three contemporary artists, who form their artistic perspectives rooted in personal daily life and experiences, the exhibition showcases how each artist responds to reality and builds their artistic world in their unique ways and viewpoints.

Kim Hanna visually materializes emotional fragments that exist clearly but remain unnamed on the surface of society, between emotions, using various materials. Ham Mina captures the remnants of emotions from a series of events that happened during her childhood and the feelings that have continued to the present. Kim Minsu’s works, which observe and grasp shapes within memories of past daily life, are expressed on the canvas with an improvisational sensibility.

Ham Mina, Together, 2023, Oil on Canvas, 116.8 x 91.0cm.
[Photo by Phoebe Gallery]

The three artists present to the audience unnamed entities discovered in their lives?those difficult to describe in words, existing but invisible, or already vanished?manifested through their unique nonverbal expressions.

"The most personal is the most creative." The reason why director Martin Scorsese’s definition received great public acclaim is likely because it applies to most fields in modern society. The current trend emphasizing the 'personal' can also be found in the works and attitudes of contemporary artists.

Hanna Kim, The Slice of Question, 2024, Oil, Acrylic, Spray Paint, Urethane on Wood Panel, 151.5 x 100 x 18cm. [Photo by PiVi Gallery]

As the title 'Personal Gestures' intuitively suggests, the exhibition gathers works expressed in the unique languages of three actively working artists, demonstrating how personal gestures operate within reality. On March 6, an 'Artist Talk' featuring all three artists will provide an in-depth opportunity to hear their stories. The exhibition runs until March 30 at Phoebe Gallery, Bukchon-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul.

Heecheon Kim, 'Lifting Barbells', 2015, single-channel video, HD, black and white, sound (stereo), 21 minutes [Photo courtesy of BB&M]

▲Group Exhibition 'Unsentimental Education' = BB&M Gallery presents the group exhibition 'Unsentimental Education' featuring four young exclusive artists: Kim Heecheon, Sung Sigyeong, Woo Jeongsu, and Tak Youngjun. This exhibition introduces key video works and new paintings by the participating artists, developed while navigating between virtual and real, sociocultural differences and boundaries, and between figurative and abstract.

Tak Youngjun observes sociocultural mechanisms that construct human beliefs and faith systems through various media ranging from video to sculpture, flat works, and installations, contemplating the impact and structure of faith that transcends science and technology on society and the collective unconscious. Kim Heecheon, who recently held a solo exhibition 'Double Poser' (2023) at London’s Hayward Gallery, focuses on the operational modes of worlds constructed by technology, raising contemporary issues about the unique cognitive sensations experienced by modern people.

Woo Jeong-su, Insomnia #15, 2023, Acrylic on canvas, 116.8 x 91 cm [Photo by BB&M]

Woo Jeongsu deconstructs and re-edits fragments of episodes from illustrations, myths, and dramas of different eras, treating the hidden sides of images detached from historical context with cynicism and humor in his unique painting style. Sung Sigyeong, who presents abstract paintings characterized by free drawing and bold color contrasts, explores pure formal language created by regular patterns and trajectories formed by rules, as well as free drawing entrusted entirely to intuition and spontaneity, as seen in his new work titled 'Othello.'

Echoing the title of Gustave Flaubert’s 19th-century French novel 'Sentimental Education' (1869), which transparently revealed the emotional peculiarities and consciousness of a new generation, the exhibition focuses on young artists who express today’s sensibility and aesthetics through rational thought and logic into visual language. The exhibition runs until March 9 at BB&M Gallery, Seongbuk-ro, Seongbuk-gu, Seoul.

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