ART ONO 2025

Arario Gallery presents the work of artists who reflect on the contemporary digital media environment through the language of art. In particular, viewers will encounter recent works by OK Seungcheoland NOH Sangho, both of whom are frequently referenced within the context of ‘post-internet art.’ OK investigates the notion of originality in the age of digital reproduction, using ‘light’ digital images sourced from online media to create ‘heavier’ outputs in the form of painting, sculpture, and video. These images, processed through replication and transformation, acquire new originality in the final artwork. NOH, meanwhile, has been working with AI-generated imagery since 2022. The uncanny glitches produced by AI in the process of creation are likened by the artist to moments of religious ‘holiness.’ His recent installation, HOLY – Gravity and Grace (2024), combines painting and video within a sculptural structure modelled after a confessional booth. For the artist, the confessional becomes a symbolic threshold between the digital and the analog, a passage between two worlds. BEAK Jungki’s new work is of (2025) addresses the question of material uniqueness in photography, which is increasingly threatened by digital image saturation and AI technologies. Since 2011, the artist has been developing this series by photographing landscapes and printing them with pigments extracted from plants collected on site. This process embeds the organic presence of nature into the work, offering a contemplative response to the fading originality of art in the digital age.

LIM Nosikand CHA Hyeonwook reconstruct deeply personal memories through painting, seeking to transform the intimate into a universally resonant language. LIM’s works reflect both his current studio space and memories of vast natural landscapes from childhood. The misty, blurred surfaces echo the erosion of memory over time. Fragmented self-portraits dispersed across the canvas act as both observers and observed, veiled in fog to suggest the shifting boundaries between subject and object. CHA draws inspiration from traditional Korean color painting techniques while experimenting across Eastern and Western styles. He layers pigment onto hanji through dry brushwork, while using pressure marks to create line and depth. His landscapes, based on personal memory, blur the border between tradition and contemporary expression.

AHN Jisanand SHIH Yung Chun explore tension and imperfection embedded in human emotion and behaviour, drawing out a paradoxical aesthetics. AHN’s paintings create a subtle sense of unease through slightly distorted forms, embodying internal anxiety and desire. His works not only depict the external features of subjects but also their emotional and situational context. SHIH Yung Chun, a Taiwanese artist, finds inspiration in childhood memory, societal norms, and human behaviour. His use of surface scratches and layered textures—like in Antique Store.A (2019)—turn perceived ‘imperfections’ into points of engagement. By rubbing, layering, and staining his surfaces, he transcends conventional techniques to construct complex spatial dimensions where flatness and volume coexist.

The artists featured in ARARIO GALLERY’s booth at Art OnO 2025 are gaining recognition for their exploration of aesthetic values through unique visual languages, each responding to contemporary sociocultural conditions in their own way. Their practices include reflecting on the production and circulation of images, expanding personal and subjective memories into universal and shared emotions, and developing distinct visual worlds by assigning paradoxical aesthetics to elements that are often regarded as inherently negative.