"For a moment, happiness" is an exhibition by artist Go Eun-Ju that tries to utlise spirituality and shamanism to cure the anxiety of present-day life. Unstable economic conditions and rapidly changing, ever-more competitive societies have left people with no other choice but to learn to co-live with anxiety. Spirituality, religion, hypinosis are seen as a path to psychological equlibrium. The artist herself uses shamanistic practices to bring stability in her own life. Her paintings act as talismans of sorts, a safe space to which she can return in times of anxiety. The symmetrical patterning works towards the same end. Art is employed as a healing method.
The main motif of Jooho Kim's "Lovely People" show is love for people. With no artificiality, posing or pretense in the artist's work, he humorously expresses the various inner sensibilities of human beings with the most realistic and straightforward way of speaking. It simply captures human life in an honest, fun, and unadorned naive expression. As if emphasizing only the positive elements of life, the faces he creates seem to emphasize only the aesthetics of joy, laughter, and wit, not anguish and anxiety. In this face, there is a simple smile of a human being who has overcome anxiety to find his or her inner bliss. In this latest exhibition, Jooho Kim focuses on love - love for family, love between men and women, and love for the people of the world in which we live. The various forms of love necessary to harmonize human life are captured in the face and figure of a person, conveying the value of hope. His works have long appeared in elementary, middle, and high school art textbooks as examples of art education material, and are housed in representative art museums in Korea, such as the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Daejeon Museum of Art, Soma Art Museum, and Gimpo International Sculpture Park.
In this exhibition, titled "Pulling and Binding", Seojeong Nam, addresses the relationship between the pictorial elements of line and color. In his oil paintings, the clash of disparate colors stands out, and lines appear as elements that amplify or alleviate the initial tension. At the same time, the artist's pastel drawing creates a lyrical atmosphere as colors permeate each other. Lines also appear in various forms, giving a more relaxed and warm feeling than in oil paintings.
Lee Ae-Ri's solo exhibition "Small Fruit, Big World" discusses the laws of nature seen and emodied in complex topics such as life and death, existence and nothingness, and yin and yang. The artist draws our attention to the silent un-assuming and un-demanding beauty of nature and the universe. The shape of a round fruit symbolizes the cyclical nature of Mother Nature, and also the infinite world of the vast universe. Like the process of a small seed being sent out to the larger world, the countless lines the artist draws with a fine brush are continuously connected and contain many colorful stories of life. The image of a seed wrapped in the flower resembles the shape of a mother embracing her baby, bringing ideas of fertility, multiple blessings, and love.
The artworks are executed with Posco Stillion's 'PosART', a steel plate incorporating high-resolution inkjet printing technology which enables the expression of rich colors and delicate textures of works. The result is a semi-permanent material that can be exhibited in an experiential way and touched directly by the visitors.
Seongnam Cube Museum of Art's representative exhibition showcases leading artists aged 45-60 who are active in the Seongnam region. Starting 2020, the museum has played a big role in developing the local art scene one step further by steadily introducing leading artists who play a pivotal role in local art.
Mi-Seon Shin, who is introduced as the first major artist of this year, compares deep worries and introspection about life and the importance of living today to a beautiful flower. The artist expresses the process of discovering her true self by constantly contemplating the reason and direction of life through fundamental agony over 'what am I and how should I live'. Her recent works - the 'Logos Channel' series, 'Exodus the Way' series, and 'Conversation with John Bunyan' series - were drawn while meditating on the Bible.
Suwon Museum of Art presents the 2023 permanent exhibition "Water contains the stars" which counts a total of 46 works selected from 260 pieces from the city's collection. Suwon is known as the city of water ("su" means water in Korean). The exhibition consists of three parts. The first one is titled "Counting the Stars" and focuses on Suwon's history. The second one, "Lighting the Water Hill" features living artists, particularly those active between 1970s and 1990s. The last section, "Beyond Gender, Stars" discusses feminism.
The main theme of Hwang Julie's "The Love Book" exhibition is the ' invaluable unbearable lightness of existence'. In the artist's series, our ordinary life gradually overlaps with the noble life of the Buddha, and the boundary between nature and the world is disappearing. At a first glance, it seems that sentient beings are Buddhas and Buddhas are sentient beings. At least intuitively, it seems to be true. In fact, the Buddha is our nature of love and compassion, there is a Buddha in each of us, and at the same time, each of us is connected to the Buddha. The artist makes us take a closer look at what really makes us noble. She imprints the divinity within us and awakens the nobility in our ordinarity.
More April 2023 Korean art here.