One of the major distinctive phenomena of the contemporary art world within the post-internet age is the invention of the image search engine. Specifically, with the younger generations of painters/artists who are not located in art capitols, I have discovered sleeper cells of artists who are residually and inexorably connected to the larger global community. Unique in their complete lack of physical knowledge and the greater contextual understanding which invariably comes with it, and yet extremely fluent with specific images of artists and their online reputations. This creates individual and small groups of artists who work almost completely independently from market conditions and the normal ecosystems of aesthetics. Like acrobats without safety nets, or freestyle rock climbers without belays, these Internet savvy individualists create distortions in the conventional structures and growth patterns of the tesseract-ual cycles of contemporary aesthetics, creating fantastic variables and possible narratives.
At the root of this exhibition are the ideas of coincidental fate, serendipitous destiny, Exquisite Corpses and Hydrogen Bonds. In advance of this exhibition I have had the unique privilege and opportunity to be a working artist with studios and projects on 3 continents, over a dozen countries, and more than 20 cities. When I returned 2 years ago to open my latest studio in Mullaedong, Seoul. I began to make a point of visiting the studios of young artists, some friends some ex-assistants. I was delighted to find that painting is vital and celebrated in the younger generations of Korean Contemporary artists, and that through the chemistry of culture an extremely talented group of young women are all creating fantastic pieces that all relate to each other, and yet have never met personally, until very recently.
The Exquisite Corpse was a method of collaboration invented by the surrealists around 1925 to expand the possibility of unconscious or seemingly random connections, which fit their inherent philosophical frontier perfectly. Fast forward a century later and the unconscious dreamscapes of the surrealist have morphed into the VR spaces of Kim Nayul, who directly uses the advent of CG to "sketch out" compositions before breathing life into them with oil on canvas. Or in the process driven compositions of Cho Yoojin the traditions of Abstract expressionism, post-feminist, post-structural built from scratch paintings, are alive and kicking.
Hydrogen Bonds are the molecular phenomena in a balanced H2O particle, where the positive and negative isotopes form perfectly balanced stable bonds AND the hydrogen molecules are also residually attracted to each other. Allowing creatures like the Jesus lizard to walk on the virtual skin of water.
In the performative compositions of the ex-figure painter Choi Youngbin the presence of the figure, her figure, of the artists personal dance emanates from her canvases. While in the personal post-archeological, portraiture of Koo Jiyoon, the artist takes her own work as a found object and starting point, (having not started an absolutely new painting for some years), returning again and again until she is finally satisfied.
I can think of no other city or time where a group of solely female artists have created a painting movement of art historical note. We can find a profoundly connected conversations happening between all these artists work, and as the exhibition title suggests a shared vision of the strange and wonderful evolution of what painting should and will look like now.
Press release courtesy One And J.+1.
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