An other scene of Korea
In pursuit of exchange and dialogue throughout international Contemporary artistic creation, after “Another scene of Lebanon” in 2020, Odile Ouizeman is delighted to present four Korean artists of the same generation who were born in the 80’s and came to be immersed in Paris.
For the past 60 years, Korean minimalism and abstraction have resiliently composed Korean pictorial identity. Dansaekhwa: korean monochrome painting attracted the French public with its delicate and subtle aesthetics and entered the French Art scene in early 1970.
Since then, a new generation of korean artists arrived in France around ten years ago have taken part in the parisian artistic scene exploring the use of traditional materials and techniques in a panorama of mediums and contemporary practices.
Their work gradually parted ways with the korean school of painting that shaped the history of korean contemporary art. They now have abandoned the common visual language often preoccupied with a dominant aesthetics, in favor of reorienting humans to question the abundance of expression and potentiality of visual arts.
“Another scene of Korea” suggests a new vision for this artistic diversity of the work by allowing us to go back and forth between cultural attachment and contemporary researches. The exhibition explores the relationship between tangible and immaterial, also visible and impenetrable aspects through a language above all organic and spiritual.
The exhibition opens with the installation of Joowon Jo, whose work is a noticeable example of a bridge connecting the traditional roots and digital techniques. Thanks to the use of 3D modeling, associated with his colored ink paintings, the artist makes it possible to coexist a series of stepping stones.
In korean culture, when people go hiking in the mountains, they stack and balance stones in a small tower and make a wish. “The stepstones” offer paths through the illusion of a textured paper and lead our gaze into the heart of the image. The viewer can take any path offered to themselves as they are willing to.
Seunghwan Lee brings us to a controlled nature as defined and limited in a digital space. The mathematical science takes preponderant importance for this young artist who constantly questions the engaging relationships between humanity and our natural environment. Uncertainty no longer owns a place in this organic and algorithmic world which thus creates the illusion of chance.
Silent paintings of Jihee Han let us in her meditative harmony with nature. The artist arrived in Paris 12 years ago and refuses to depict the natural scenery itself; she explores and reunites various states of nature that are the stillness and the torment provided by nature to humanity. A blank space in her painting, therefore, plays the same role as that of the Korean traditional painting style “Minhwa.” Only a few shades of blue, black and white are needed to fulfil her desire to reunite water, mountain and ice in a space-time as static as rhythmic.
Therefore, “Another scene of Korea” brings the four artists together around a creative narration that derived as much from the contemplation of nature, at times, as from a contradictory approach to the human-nature relationship.
Lisa Lebel
