[Exhibition of the Week] Hanjinseop Solo Exhibition · Marc Bruys: Living in the Clouds and More

Editor's NoteThis week's exhibitions summarize and introduce a variety of attractive exhibitions that can be seen nationwide over the course of one week.

▲Hanjinseop Solo Exhibition 'Saint Kim Daegeon Andrea, Standing at the Vatican (S. Andreas Kim TaeGon, unveiled at the Vatican)' = Ghana Art is holding a solo exhibition of sculptor Hanjinseop titled 'Saint Kim Daegeon Andrea, Standing at the Vatican' throughout the venue. Hanjinseop made a special achievement as the first Korean artist to erect a statue of Saint Kim Daegeon Andrea in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican. In this solo exhibition held after about 10 years, the artist details the entire process and aims to shed light on the artistic world he pursues.

Father Kim Dae-geon, 2023, Bianco Carrara, 27 x 19 x 58 (h)cm [Photo by Gana Art]

The ultimate theme running through the works of the artist, who has been devoted to the materiality of stone for half a century, is 'life.' In the early stages of his work, he presented figurative sculptures centered on the human body, but in 2007, after receiving a commission from Haitai Confectionery to create the Haitai statue, he began producing animal sculptures. Subsequently, he created sculptures personifying animals, such as those based on the twelve zodiac animals. Entering the 2010s, he expanded his scope by producing a series of applied stone sculptures, where carved stones are attached mosaic-like onto models made of special materials. Hanjinseop, who extracts forms from hard and cold stone and breathes life into them to recreate, has built a sculptural world pursuing harmony between traditional Korean sculptural materials and methods and the modernity of Western sculpture.

The exhibition, held until January 14, 2024, at Ghana Art Center in Pyeongchang-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul, will reflect on the process of creating and installing the statue of Father Kim Daegeon at St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican last September, revisiting the artistic world Hanjinseop has independently built. For this exhibition, the artist created another 60cm-sized statue of Father Kim Daegeon identical in form to the one installed at the Vatican. The work began in Italy alongside the large statue but was ultimately completed recently in Korea. Although smaller in size, it required as much effort as the large statue. The artist said, “This work was actually more difficult. I thought it would be easier doing the same thing twice, but it was a completely different story,” and added, “As I finished this work, I realized that the statue of Father Kim Daegeon at the Vatican was not achieved by my own strength. I feel it was possible because of the help of the Holy Spirit.”

Sculptor Hanjinseop explained the process of creating the statue of Father Kim Daegeon installed at St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican on the 14th at the Gana Art Center in Jongno-gu, Seoul.
[Image source=Yonhap News]

Before taking on the statue of Father Kim Daeon, the artist created the Blessed Han Deokun Thomas statue at Hawuhyeon Church, the Saint Jeong Hasang Paul statue at Beodne Church, and the Saint Kim Daegeon Andrea statue at the Daejeon Diocese Office. All three statues wear the traditional Korean hat called gat and a doppo robe. This marked a new chapter in his work with meticulous realistic sculptures not seen in his previous works. Being a Catholic believer, having long experience in stone sculpture, having studied in Italy for 10 years, and being able to work locally in Italy enabled him to be entrusted with creating the statue of Father Kim Daegeon installed at St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican. Reflecting on this process, the artist said, “Perhaps the things that happened to me were ultimately training to erect the statue of Father Kim Daegeon at St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican. Wasn't everything part of God's plan?”

▲Marc Bruys 'Living in the Clouds' = Gallery 508 is holding the first domestic exhibition introducing Marc Bruys' flat works titled 'Living in the Clouds.' This exhibition in Korea, which he revisited 25 years after participating in the 1998 Buyeo Sculpture Symposium, is the first to showcase the artist's recent flat works.

Marc Bruys 'Living in the Clouds' [Photo by Gallery 508]

Marc Bruys, a sculptor, painter, and installation artist, has been interested in the temporality and eventfulness of works and was active as a central figure in the Nouveau R?alisme movement in the 1960s. He loves and has great interest in the East, having stayed in Korea and Japan, and has sublimated diverse cultural experiences worldwide into his works through assemblage, collage, ceramics, painting, and other creative forms.

Born in 1937 in the small Dutch city of Alkmaar, he studied at Arnhem Art School in the Netherlands and then moved to Paris, where he began serious artistic activities starting with wooden object works. He joined the French avant-garde art movement Nouveau R?alisme led by critic Pierre Restany and participated in the 2nd Paris Biennale, continuing an active artistic career.

After traveling to Mexico and the United States, he was involved with the avant-garde Fluxus group and collaborated with avant-garde musician John Cage while performing street performance art. In the 1970s, he immersed himself in environmental art, focusing on assemblage works using discarded objects. In the 1980s, he developed an interest in painting, producing various flat works with emotional colors, demonstrating his outstanding talent as a painter. In 1988, he lived in Seoul for six months to install a large sculpture at the Seoul Olympic Park, experiencing Korean culture. His flat works began to receive renewed attention after the French cosmetics company Guerlain Foundation acquired many pieces and donated them to the National Museum of Modern Art at the Pompidou Center in Paris.

This exhibition features flat works that maximize the color bleeding effect using dry pastels on water-soaked canvas, applying tempera techniques reminiscent of ancient murals. His paintings evoke a dreamy atmosphere like images from fairy tales, offering a sensuous flat work distinct from his avant-garde object sculptures made by synthesizing waste materials.

Relay Greetings Toward the Hidden Nebula, 2023, Dye, Lyocell, Silk Thread, 145.5 × 112.1cm
[Photo by Gallery Chosun]

▲Shin Hyunjung Solo Exhibition 'Limpa Limpa!' = Gallery Chosun presents the solo exhibition 'Limpa Limpa!' by artist Shin Hyunjung, who has built an independent painting language, showcasing various works where dyed fabrics are transformed and recombined.

The exhibition is a feast of colors played by the artist's painting skins that swim flexibly between matter and body, like transparent lymph that is thin and faint but vigorously continues life. The artist, who has built her own painting language by deconstructing and expanding surfaces and supports as elements of painting, has especially immersed herself in inner concentration integrating dualistic worlds such as body and mind, nature and artificiality, subject and object, based on experiences gained through meditation and yoga practice.

The artist continues to seek painting as an expanded subject who lets go of herself and allows change in the face of human limitations exposed to unpredictable external environments. The exhibition captures the combination and collision of materials interacting through the life force of water, which flows and changes endlessly without being 'fixed,' expressed in the rhythmic chant 'Limpa Limpa!' Lympha is Latin for water and is the etymology of lymph, which densely connects paths in our body.

Transparency Reaching the End of Resistance, 2022, Acrylic, Dye, Bleached Cotton, Silk, Rayon, Gardenia, Ink, Mulberry, Blueberry, Flagpole, Variable Size
Photo by Gallery Chosun

The dichotomous boundaries distinguishing matter and immaterial, human and non-human, living and non-living, nature and non-nature are, in fact, equal only before the 'vulnerability' of the conditions each faces. The artist proposes the surface of painting as different objects that confront and embrace these life issues given to us. This is an achievement for painting itself to breathe in communication and interaction with the world, relinquishing the authority of painting subordinated to the solidity of art. Carefully observing patterns and traces created when dyes such as mulberry (leaves of the mulberry tree), acrylic, and lacquer (bleaching agents), which are easily accessible in daily life, meet water and transferring them onto surfaces, the artist draws inspiration from the phenomenon where these dyes penetrate the body, react with cells, transform, and are expelled again, allowing the dyes to emerge on the fabric according to their nature by letting go of the hand as a user.

Calling this 'time of entrusting,' the artist maintains an object-oriented attitude of letting go of the subject and waiting for materials to operate, interact, and organize themselves. She also dyes various fabrics such as linen, silk, and Tencel that we wear and hang them on stainless steel supports, connecting painting to everyday spaces. Freely moving between body as the subject of creation and attitude as an object, the artist expands inclusive painting where nature and artificiality, human and material, art and daily life coexist, and further develops thinking painting that contemplates the 'arrival' point where abstract painting meets the world. The exhibition runs from the 23rd until January 17, 2024, at Gallery Chosun in Sogyeok-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul.