KONG Shine: Adagio for Springs

Arario Gallery Cheonan is proud to present a solo exhibition of Shine Kong, on display from April 9th to June 7th. Kong’s third solo exhibition titled Adagio for Springs is composed of three parts: , , and . They are the extensions of her previous series , , , and which constructed her last exhibition at Arario Seoul in 2007. Adagio will show approximately 20 oil paintings and 10 sculptural installations which were produced in Kong’s studios in Jeju Island and Wonju during the last two years.

Kong hand- makes small objects out of clay and positions them on a little theatrical stage. The staged models are then transferred onto two- dimensional canvases by the method of oil painting. Each object on the stage is endowed with the artist’s personal messages and meanings derived from her private experiences with the world. Then, she fabricates relational narratives among the objects and the entire surface comes to possess a cohesive story. The series of paintings titled are extensions of the series which were shown at Kong’s previous Seoul exhibition. The artist takes the word ‘yesterday’ which belongs to the times past and repositions it in the word ‘today’, and the combined word ‘yestoday’ finds itself in an entirely new time frame which shares memories of the past and the present. Kong’s repetitive motifs include familiar mundane objects such as toilets, trees, clouds, candles, and ladders, which all bear the artist’s personal message. In , objects which appear in the canvases of series are given independence from the canvas and are created as actual sculptures. Spatially realized objects tell their own monologues, and their voices are again re-transferred onto canvases in the series. Silent sceneries composed of white clouds floating in the blue skies, small white birds resting on dry branches, quite green islands dotted across the ocean, origami airplanes that gently glide through the air— allow the audiences to emerge themselves in the mysterious and dreamy atmosphere of the images, naturally come to accept the ambivalence of meaning, but at the same time apply their own memory and imagination and create their own stories.

Shine Kong graduated from Chicago Art Institute in 2005, had her first solo show at Alternative Space Loop in 2005, and her second show at Arario Seoul in 2007. 2009’s Adagio at Cheonan will show her tremendous growth in terms of scale, variety and depth, and we show our gratitude for your interest and participation.