WEST BUND ART & DESIGN

ARARIO GALLERY Seoul and Shanghai are set to host a major retrospective of the Korean artist JUNG Kangja (1942-2017) this coming November. JUNG Kangja’s debut work ”Kiss Me” is currently on display at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York as part of the group exhibition ”Only the Young: Experimental Art in Korea, 1960s-1970s”. JUNG Kangja was active during a time filled with intense military dictatorship and ideological confrontations. With her bold artistic practices, she garnered immense attention and played a pivotal role in the early formation of performance art in Korea. In her later years, she continued to express her social consciousness and identity through abstract paintings. The hanbok, symbolic of the image of Korean women, frequently appears in her artwork. “Hanbok is a flag of Korean women who have been suppressed and infringed upon by male chauvinism forthousands of years. lt implies fying towards freedom, away from the deep sorrow of Korean women who have silenthendured all the suppression, discrimination, and unfair treatment. The string that ties the skirt flies and strings cut off fromthe skirts fioat as birds and clouds. ln my works, Korean women’s lives and deep sorrow are often represented as they are.” JUNG used the feature of the hanbok and created unreal, dreamlike landscapes.

Internationally celebrated for his large installations and sculptures, Indian artist **Subodh GUPTA **(b.1964) consistently integrates various aspects of Indian familial and political life into his works. Firmly believing that “the most ordinary is the most sacred”, he depicts everyday items seen throughout India, which Westerners might find exotic, in a creative and sophisticated language. Through these depictions, the artist addresses the economic transformation and rapid westernization of lndia. The gallery presents the artist’s recent attempts at large-scale paintings. This series combines photo realism with everyday objects. <Untitled> capturie the fleeting moments as flowers gradually wane. This evokes imagery from 17th-century Dutch still lifes, revealing the transient of life and death, the nature cycle, and vanitas.

The gallery will also present two masterpieces by Kim Tschang-Yeul (1929-2021), the enlightenment figure of monochromatic painting. The artist seamlessly integrated Confucianism and western culture, as well as culture and philosophy, initiating a ”water drops” series that spanned 40 years, aimed at exploring the intricate duality of matter. Water is a gentle, life-giving element, yet it also possesses the power to destroy and erode.A droplet evaporates from a liquid state to an invisible gas, and upon condensation, returns as a liquid droplet. This cyclical process is inherently infinite.The artist once remarked, “Painting water drops is an endeavor to dissolve everything within the ‘droplet’ and return to a transparent state of ‘nothingness’. By reducing anger, anxiety, fear, and all worldly matters to ‘emptiness’, we can experience tranquility and contentment. While some seek to amplify the ‘self’, my objective is to obliterate it and search for ways to articulate self-awareness.”

In addition, works from several artists who have held exhibitions at the ARARIO GALLERY Shanghai over the past year and have garnered significant attention. These include the internationally acclaimed Japanese artist Kohei NAWA, presenting his latest ”Dune” series; veteran British artist Michael SIMPSON, whose pieces can be found in collections of notable institutions including Tate, UK; Long Museum, Shanghai; and the Start Museum, Shanghai; as well as rising British artists Daisy PARRIS and Tim GARWOOD. Additionally, works by three artists born in China – HUANG Yuanqing, MA Kelu (U.S.), and HAN Feng – will also be featured.