Artists with Arario 2011: Part 3
Overview of Artists with Arario Part 3
Arario Gallery is pleased to present the works by 11 artists represented by Arario Gallery through the exhibition Artists with Arario Part 3 (AA hereafter), for approximately 40 days from January 12th to February 26th, 2012. As the last exhibition of Artists with Arario series, which is organized in three parts, it constitutes over a total of 30 works of sculpture, installation, paintings, drawings and photography, by artists from China, India, Korea and Philippines. Consisting of art works by 11 artists including Korean artists Shine Kong, Jaehwan Kim, Sunghyun Kyung, Insane Park, Young Geun Park, Byoungho Kim, Filipino artist Lesley de Chavez, Chinese artists Li Qing, Yan Heng, Yuan Yuan, and Indian artist group Thukral and Tagra, this exhibition portrays a condensed outlook and experiences on the various social cultural changes that this generation faces. A common thread of passion and hope for life penetrates the works of the featured artists, who all come from different backgrounds with different personal narratives.
Outcome of Artists with Arario Parts 1 and 2
Organized for the new Arario Gallery Cheongdam which opened in September 2011, Artist with Arario exhibition series was planned with the objective of introducing a general and comprehensive outlook on the works by artists represented by Arario Gallery. In the parts 1 and 2 of the exhibition which continued from September 20th to December 31st 2011, the exhibition provided multifaceted perspectives on the newly emerging Indian society through the context of contemporary art, presenting works by Subodh Gupta and Nalini Malani, the pioneers of Indian contemporary art, as well as young artists Jitish Kallat and Tallur L.N. at the forefront of Indian contemporary art. Parts 1 and 2 also presented new works by star artists in contemporary art world in Korea including Kwon Osang, Kang Hyung Koo, Han Sung-pil and Lee Dongwook, affirming the outstanding capability and talent of Korean artists competing at the international level. The exhibition also displayed works by Japanese, Chinese and Indonesian artists leading the contemporary art scene of the next generation. The exhibitions received praise for demonstrating Arario Gallery’s uniquely bold and advanced creative style, as well as for the effective approach to curating and displaying through complementing Arario’s artistic experimental spirit with the regional properties of Cheongdam-dong area.
Artists
Sunghyun Kyung combines images of reality and fantasy, using shaky images to portray the individual’s psychological condition that’s alienated from this indifferent society. The shaky representation of matters and people with multiple points of focus suggests feelings of confusion, fear and insecurity towards life and reality, and the images that stem from dreams reflect the artist’s attempt to escape from reality. As a continuation of his works on dreams, Kyung’s recent works in this exhibition combine unrealistic dreams and dream-like reality. The image of the elephant falling from an overpass or tornado starting up in a tranquil swamp raise discordance between scenes from the imagination that seem familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.
Shine Kong’s paintings capture the narratives of all relationships in her life, as if to document them. Objects that appear in her work, such as trees, ladders, camels, stars and chairs, are symbols that have been granted a specific meaning by the artist. Kong makes these objects with clay, blows in a breath of emotions in them, and puts them on a small theater stage. This setting, staged through the artist’s subjective symbolization, is resurrected through painting. The symbolic objects, condensed like poems, are in themselves a site of communication for intuitive bonding. In Kong’s works, contradictory values about communication, reconciliation, recovery and healing in all relationships cross over, reflecting the artist’s meditation on the relationships in life that are always unfolding.
Byoungho Kim inserts circuitry into metallic sculptures, presenting unique oeuvre of sound sculptures that create electronic sound. His works are described by tubes that stretch out from a certain focal point, with a steady electronic sound. The forms in which long narrow tubes stretch out in one or in many directions from a bulky center point juxtaposes with the swift sense of movement and the metallic coldness of his works. The metallic works are processed precisely according to the regulations of the parts and blue print the artist has designed, following the production method of mass production system, and reflecting the social structure of conventions, customs and standards. With the addition of sound, however, the energy produced from the overall work freely traverses between material and non-material, and visual and aural, allowing the viewer to experience a force that overpowers the space.
Jaehwan Kim is celebrated for his sculptural works that combine mundane objects. The objects in his works are common objects that can be seen anywhere in daily life, but are also useless things that can be easily overlooked. Kim collects things that interest him, taking them apart or reassembling them, making new forms. Exquisite and delicate yet analogue, the accidentally combined images repeat harmony and dissonance. Like words coming together to make poetry, Kim combines objects to form an artistic system which yields a new network of meaning in his work. Using symbolism and metaphor, the Filipino artist Lesley de Chavez’s works offer a sharp criticism on the sensitive subject of the colonial history and religion of his home country. With outstanding painting technique, de Chavez uses icons and symbols of the time, to illustrate the negative reality of Capitalism and the current state of his home country, as well as portraying de-personalization and corruption resulting from excessive commercialization. Throwing profound questions about the function of art in society, the artist’s works reflect his strong beliefs and encourages the viewer for insightful meditation on reality.
Li Qing experiments with various potentials in painting, capturing the rapid changes of modern China through his works. Born in 1981 and having spent his childhood in the political, financial, and social growth period of China, the artist digs up his subconscious memories to draw scenes from Chinese modern history in today’s context, portraying them in painting and photography through an indirect drawing technique. His picture puzzle series—in which a historical scene is captured in a canvas, and the same image with ten differences is captured on another canvas—are a humorous presentation of two different paintings that seem the same.
The images that appear in Young Geun Park’s works seem vaguely familiar, but they are removed from their original state and recombined and reconstructed with the artist’s imagination. The images are derived from masterpieces of Western art history, and their context is arbitrarily interpreted, re-linked, then generated into various images. Here, traces of painting, peeling, re-coating and erasing are intentionally left, and speed, violence, power, time and vitality is added through the use of a grinder. Through this artistic process, the artist endows a sense of life to borrowed images and captures a sense of life in matter.
Yan Heng captures his personal experiences and social ideology in his work. Heng’s work is inspired by his ordinary and simple everyday life, as he combines people, used objects and incidents that surround him in his life. Combining used objects and painting in one surface, his works reflect the artist’s critical stance on man’s excessive reliance on objects that invade the human cognitive domain. In order to share his experiences with the viewer, Heng remembers his school day geometry classes that never taught him anything, and recollects memories of his education that seemed indifferent to the individual learning. Through combining facts that run contradictory and unrelated to each other, the artist encourages us to transcend beyond the confined realm of standardized system of thought, to multi-dimensional world of limitless thinking.
Yuan Yuan is a painter leading a new scene in art world in China. The artist’s unique painting technique and approach to his subject derives from his subjective experiences and interesting observation. Through an objective eye, his work captures changes in China, in which lives change overnight due to rapid expansion of Chinese society, and importance is placed on the external rather than internal, and on mimicry and imitation. The image of pool or sauna that appears often in his work is a semi abstract portrayal of materiality and existence, as well as are the sparkly landscapes with halo that are depicted like a magical illusion. The artist’s paintings are a stylistic penetration on the life of Chinese people today, who seem to be living a new way of life but their way of thinking is still fixed on tradition like ancient artifacts.
Insane Park tightly aligns cable lines, and engraves on them to create images. Suggesting images from TV, his works speak about the artist’s outlook on media, and his concerns for the public that homogeneously and passively absorb the excessive production of media images. Park’s cable line works portray criminals, missing children, and individuals in the artist’s life. Through this process, Park encourages us to cast a deep reflection on the influence of overflowing images and the TV medium’s omnipresent way of delivering images.
Consisting of two India-born artists, Thukral & Tagra’s works encompass various creative fields from painting and sculpture, to fashion, product design, interior design and graphic design. Using bright lively colors and a repetition of neat exquisite images and patterns, T&T delightfully demonstrate their characteristic kitschy style. Their works focus on Indians today living in rapidly growing India, and reflect their desire for a better life. Their work, while suggesting India’s growth, also captures what’s also gradually being lost, casting a critical stance on the problems of excessive consumerism and urbanism hidden behind India’s prosperity.
