This March, Gallery Simon and the artist Hyungkyung Bae present 'Nothing, Be Nothingness'. Through the exhibition, the artist contemplates the existence of humans from three different perspectives: 'a person in front of a wall', 'another human being', and 'sameness'. It suggests that human beings are born and face countless inner and physical walls, wander endlessly, and then disappear. The sturdy and strong pieces that are not easy to move and do not dissappear if you ask them to also represent the weight of life and of one's destiny. However, despite being different individuals, the sameness as human beings suggests that we should recognize that we are all the same in the journey of life in which everything is heading toward nothingness. Of note, nothingness and emptiness are core concepts of Buddhism.
For artist Seok Min-young, the exploration of space is an artistic inspiration and an opportunity to construct the ideal world. In this exhibition, the visitors can see the evolution and development process from flat work to 3D work. Through solid and moving structures, the artist represents an unknown world and space with infinite interpretations. Interpretation of space is broadly and in-depth explored from physical, temporal and philosophical perspectives. Between numerous theories and perspectives, Seok Min-young studied the works of architects to develop her own definition of space. Through overlapping, peeling off and repetition, the artist shares her countless worries and contemplations on building your own space.
Artist Song Young-eun's solo exhibition 'Temperature of Emotion' uses visual metaphors to show the unique dreamy atmosphere and fairy-tale characters that comprise our internal ambience. The canvases are one-of-a-kind explorations of how colour shades can capture the subtle nuances of emotion. This exhibition invites the viewer to consider how various human emotions change from time to time depending on situations or moods, also the weather, the influence of the season or atmospheric temperature. The artist tried to visualize the various emotions that arise in everyday life, as if measuring them with a thermometer made of colors. With this exhibition, the artist hopes that viewers will regain their innocence and be comforted through the healing power of color.
Geum Da-hye's solo exhibition at iLHO Gallery is yet another attemt to bring joy to daily life and help the viewer find that often-lost in modern times sense of child-like innocence. "With my clay, I tried to capture the moments of excitement, happiness, love, and joy that can be felt in trivial daily life activities in my signature persona, the 'sheep'." Daily life, a material that can be somewhat ordinary, is like a canvas on which various expressions can be planted because of the numerous emotions that can be felt in it and the events and phenomena that occur unintentionally.
Artist Nam Ji-hyung has expressed the endless cycle of creation and destruction in the universe, an allegory of birth and death, with the motif of ‘falling flowers’. Very often, this endless cycle is perceived as negative because it indicates descent, but this is nature's reason and providence, and the artist believes that the cycle of life and extinction is inherent in everything. It is the fundamental topic of 'life and death', creation and destruction that the artist is inviting us to contemplate, emphasizing the fact that this is the universe's own higher logic.
In this exhibition, artist Jeon Ji-hong emphasizes the personal experience of walking and sensing the area. She has adjusted the angle of her paintings to express the various altitudes of the area to create an optical illusion at the viewer's eye level. Rather than changing the physical space structure, the direction of the picture itself is changed so that the flow of gaze flow can be redirected. Try not to get lost. The pink line on the floor provides a clue for the viewer to sensibly experience a specific location in the landscape realized as a map, and turns the original exhibition space into a private area. Through directing this exhibition, the artist suggests that the blank space in the painting serves as a place for narrative, the traces of the brush reflect the speed of the artist's walking, and the angle of the painting reflects the leisure of wandering.
Hyun So Kim's Homoludens exhibition at Placemak Galery explored the topic of socialisation and living with others; the ideal self before socialisation. "In order to adapt to life in society with other people, we live by internalizing others who are different from our innate nature. However, the freedom I felt when I took off my shell and encountered the universe with my bodily senses was like the raw freedom I experienced in a state of innocence, the self before socialization. I aim for innocence and seek to undo the rigid psychology of humans by borrowing the energy of nature. In the world of innocence, the Other is a play counterpart, not a competitor, and everyone is equal. I want to twist anthropocentrism through the mechanism of play and talk about the free playful urge of unsurpressed human nature." According to the artist, playfull ness can expand the heart and undo the "shrining" that we experience when we become socialised.
More March 2023 art from Korea - here.