July 2024 Overview
"Attitudes to Dansekhwa: Not Residing in Completion" is the inagural exhibition of Seobo Art Space Jeju, named after the late Park Seo-Bo, one of the leading Dansekhwa painters.
Dansekhwa is often referred to as Korean "monochrome paintings", often painted in off-white colours symbolising minimalism, modesty, simplicity, Buddhist and Confucian values.
The artists' point of departure is the desire to paint a meditation, to create a painting through a meditative process, to empty the mind on the canvas. The process fo creation is a process of searching within.
The off-white palette which (although not the only one) dominates the movemement is a reference to the Buddhist concept of Nothingness. At the same time as the movement aims to go back to Asian roots, it is also part of Modern Abstractionism and in sense is a crossing point between eastern and Western ideas.
Three exhibitions this month put the spotlight on Korean ceramics. Choi Young-Wook's "Karma: All is Well" explores the Moon Jar as a repository of memories and a silent observer of life and narratives. As a result it contains wisdom, a quality that the author aspires to. The shape of the Jar (seen sideways) is reminiscent of the ups and downs of life and the way in which different event-altitudes remain interconnected in the same entity called Fate.
Yeon Bong-Sang's solo show features not paintings of Moon Jars but actual Moon Jars designed with a surface resembling the surface of the moon. His works are the intersection of cosmis mystery, destiny, soul and human destinies; an attempt to bridge these into a single symbol.
"Geumsari, where Moon Jars were made" is hosted by Buncheongsagi White Porcelain Room, an art space dedicated to maintaining and preserving the tradition of white Jars from the Jeoson period. Noted for its restrained beauty, Buncheong ceramics are made of grey-blue clay coated with white porcelain which is then baked at 1600 degrees Celsius and then decorated.
Photographer Min Byung-Gil's "Imagined Landscape" presents Nature as a refuge, an escape to tranquility from the information overload of our age. His latest show is a return to clean minimalism enabled by the camera which is a contradiction in and of itself. The exhibition is modernity-enabled escape from modernity.
The world we live in is full of images and information both of which decrease the human's power to think for oneself, to reflect, to contemplate. Information overcomplicates, emptiness simplifies.
Nature is the East's favourite object for contemplation but it is not only the East. The Ancients in the West also thought it represents Divine design.
Aristotle once said that the essential form (the original idea/design) of every thing is present in each final thing, and that the form (idea; DNA) constitutes reality (final outcome; the adult body). Landscape paintings and photography follow the same logic - trying to perceive the original design (DNA; idea of the Creator) from contemplating the final outcome (Nature).
In the constantly speeding-up digital age in which the sensory overload is off the chart, a quiet contemplative artwork can offer an innovative experience for the senses.
Shin Jong-Min's "Add-on" exhibition at OCI Art Museum features sculptures which resemble pixelised video game characters. The artist aims to build an imaginary world of tangible illusions. He gives material body to dreamt-of characters; roles which someone may wish to play in life. In a strange way, the exhibition venue becomes a middle ground between fantasy and materiality.
The basic building block is the cube - visible and exposed in the final sculpture. The cube is an allusion to the idea that we build our own reality and our own roles in life. The artists wants to send the empowering message that we have agency in our lives and in who and what we become in this life.
ALL July 2024 shows
