[Exhibitions of the Week] Seosangik Solo Exhibition 'High and Dry' · New Media Art Exhibition 'As Your Wish' etc.

▲Sangik Seo Solo Exhibition 'High and Dry' = Gallery Purple is hosting Sangik Seo's solo exhibition 'High and Dry' until May 26.

High and Dry, oil on canvas, 130.3x193.9cm, 2023 [Photo by Gallery Purple]

The artist has expressed his artistic reality and concerns through theatrical and surreal spatial compositions emphasizing narrative. He also creates his own space that crosses the boundary between reality and unreality by reconstructing and editing various landscapes such as museums, cities, and streets. Within the canvas where reality and imagination, figurative and abstract collide, the subjects are gradually depicted with loose and scattered forms and brushstrokes. In this way, Sangik Seo is building his world through various attempts and changes that resist being defined as one.

The exhibition title High and Dry is an idiomatic expression describing a situation where something is pushed to the shore by the high tide and then trapped and drying out on sandbanks or mudflats at low tide. It is taken from the song title by the British rock band Radiohead. ‘High and Dry’ expresses the idea that our society, which has repeatedly prospered and developed, has become stagnant and isolated in various aspects such as economy, politics, and community, and that the individual artist’s work is also on the ebb and flow of realization and frustration about painting.

Sanctuary of the Painter_Julian Opie, oil on canvas, 53x45.5cm, 2021~2023
[Photo by Gallery Purple]

This exhibition consists of the ‘High and Dry’ series, the ‘Temples of The Artists’ series, and smaller works. ‘High and Dry’ is a series of paintings depicting people waiting for the last train on a train station platform. Like the ebb and flow of tides, people come and go at the train station, and the figures in the paintings stand on the platform waiting for the train that will take them. However, it is unclear how long they must wait or whether the train will take them where they want to go. In the works, billboards, trains, and platform shapes serve as formative elements that divide and compose the space, intersecting real landscapes and virtual spaces. The ambiguous space and the figures drawn indifferently without emotion reflect the artist’s gaze contemplating an uncertain reality.

In the ‘Temples of The Artists’ section, about 30 works from Sangik Seo’s ongoing ‘Temples of The Artists’ series since 2012 are exhibited, featuring Francis Bacon, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Hernan Bas, and others. This work portrays the portraits of masters who have reached a saint-like status in art, painted against the backdrop of their representative works. It is both an expression of respect for the painters and a process of exploring artistic heritage and studying various pictorial elements such as composition, color, and technique unique to each artist. Sangik Seo emphasizes that the strength to endure in the ‘High and Dry’ situation is belief. These painters devoted their lives to pushing forward their beliefs in art and building their own worlds. By painting them, Seo builds his own belief. Like fate, he accumulates brushstrokes in the reality he faces, fills the space with works that are the products of his belief.

Lee Gyutae, Tree and Bird [Photo provided by Timothiart]

▲Junoh Jang & Gyutae Lee Two-Person Exhibition 'Light & Light' = Timo Art is hosting a two-person exhibition by Junoh Jang and Gyutae Lee until the 30th. This exhibition is the first collaboration between the two longtime friends and introduces about 20 works in various media including large mobiles, photography, painting, drawing, and sculpture.

'Light & Light' tells the story of two birds imagined by the artists to express happiness and sadness in our lives. The two birds, each with different light, meet as if by fate. One bird has soft white feathers like cotton candy, and the other has sharply honed golden feathers. Together, they roam the earth and sea, sharing the beauty of the world with each other. The works tell the story of this meeting of two lights. The artists focused on the properties of light?its lightness that spreads in many directions and dries heavy and complex surroundings. They express a relationship where the light-as-light selves meet, reflect, harmonize, and balance each other.

Jang Juno, Layer [Photo by Timosiart]

Junoh Jang, who majored in sculpture, is a member of the designer duo Sparks Edition (Junoh Jang, Jihyeo Uh), working across the boundaries of design and fine art. He has gained significant attention for handling visual branding for musicians such as BTS, 10cm, RM, and Lee Juck. As an artist, he also pursues sculpture, painting, and photography. Gyutae Lee, an animation artist and illustrator, has held solo exhibitions at Gallery Nucleus in the U.S. in 2022, Albus Gallery in 2021, and Lotte Gallery Incheon in 2020 with his color drawing works that carefully capture moments of emotion and light. The exhibition runs until the 30th at Timo Art, Banpo-dong, Seocho-gu, Seoul.

Shin Min-gyu, Drawing Kinetic FACE
[Photo by Seoul Design Foundation]

▲New Media Art Exhibition ‘As Your Wish’ = The new media art exhibition ‘As Your Wish’ is held at Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) until May 14. Unlike media art, which combines media technology and art, new media art is art created using digital technology and media. It emphasizes interaction between the artwork and the viewer, encouraging audience participation.

This exhibition presents works completed through audience participation. Each work shows various outcomes depending on the viewer’s intention, as suggested by the exhibition title. When standing in front of the work, the viewer becomes the protagonist. The exhibition was planned to give modern people, who often forget themselves while focusing on external objects and others, a moment to concentrate on themselves. It delivers messages of life and art, challenge and hope through fresh works by young artists heading toward new media art. While viewing artworks applying digital technology, visitors can cultivate their imagination about creation.

The main exhibition is composed of four sections: ‘Kinetic Series,’ ‘Emotion Series,’ ‘Surface Series,’ and ‘Artificial Intelligence (AI).’

Lee Seungjeong, Tangible Emotion_Reflection [Photo by Seoul Design Foundation]

Min-gyu Shin’s ‘Kinetic Series’ transforms data values of human facial movements, expressions, and shapes into dynamic forms. It collects and analyzes the shapes of over 80 facial muscles, bone structures, cartilage, and other key facial movements, modularizes them, and places each module within a frame to appear as a single drawing work.

Seungjeong Lee’s ‘Emotion Series’ expresses human emotions through senses, studies their correlations, and systematizes them into art. When a viewer touches a sensor attached to a mirror, their emotional state is measured by skin conductance (EDA) detection and then expressed as a sensory taste. Depending on the measured emotional state, four types of coffee beans are extracted. The extracted beans can be taken home or ground and enjoyed as coffee at the exhibition venue. The exhibition runs until May 14 at Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP), Dongdaemun-gu, Seoul.