This exhibition took place when the gallery was previously known as Choi & Lager.

CHOI&LAGER Gallery, Seoul is proud to present an exhibition of two German artists, sculptor Andreas Blank and painter Helena Parada Kim, from February 28 through March 28, 2018. While the two artists work in two different media; sculpture and painting, yet their works have something in common: they explore historical and social contexts of contemporary society while reinterpreting modern objects in traditional materials and techniques.

Both artists are active in Berlin, Germany, a metropole of contemporary art and have been part of the mainstream German art scene. Blank's works are in the collection of the Federal Republic of Germany as well as in major state institutions including the Ministry for Environment and other corporate and individual collections. Parada Kim's works are in the Düsseldorf municipal collection and Metzler Foundation. Her very anticipated solo show is scheduled for next year at the Gladbeck Kunstverein, a very noted regional art institution in Germany.

ANDREAS BLANK (b. 1976, Ansbach, Germany) Lives and works in Berlin, Germany Born in 1976 in Ansbach, Germany, Andreas Blank completed his Master at the Royal College of Art in London after graduating from the State Academy of Fine Art Karlsruhe. He received a lot of public attention in London after the graduation when he was nominated for the New Sensations Award in 2009 by the Saatchi Gallery and Channel 4, the major British public-service television broadcaster. Blank creates sculptures in contemporary context using traditional sculptural techniques and materials; which include marble, alabaster, basalt, and limestone. He seeks out various rare stones, traveling to quarries in Volterra, Italy in search of pellucid alabaster or Zimbabwe to find deep black marble. He sculpts objects we often use or find in our everyday surroundings, such as paper planes, plastic bags or white shirts and lend them poetical meanings. Once installed in the gallery his works cause viewers to meditate on the underlying beauty of everyday objects. When he uses materials such as marble and limestone to make ephemeral and consumptive quotidian objects the artist allows us to reflect on our extremely short transient lives contrary to eternity and immortality.

HELENA PARADA KIM (b. 1982, Cologne, Germany) Lives and works in Berlin, Germany Helena Parada Kim was born to a Korean nurse and a Spanish immigrant worker. She was brought up in Cologne, Germany. She studied art at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf where her artistic capability gained recognition as a disciple of Professor Peter Doig, a world-renowned artist. Deeply touched by photographs featuring Korean nurses dispatched to Germany that she saw in her mother's photo album, she became deeply interested in the history and culture of Korea. Through this exploration into her own Korean identity Parada Kim began tackling subject matters such as Korean nurses, hanbok (Korean traditional clothing), and ancestral rites. Parada Kim has produced a variety of series with the subject matter of the hanbok, exploring the personal stories pertaining to this traditional dress. The hanbok in her paintings ushers viewers to a specific era and moment, extending the arena of exploration from an individual to a collective history. To the artist, the act of executing paintings with Korean subject matter is a long process of searching for her identity as a Korean, but to other Koreans, it may serve as an opportunity to pictorially remind themselves of facets of Korean history less familiar in contemporary times. Noted Renaissance painters such as Tiziano Vecelli and Diego Velazquez as well as 17th century realist Dutch still lives profoundly influence Parada Kim's work. The motifs of her paintings are faithful to traditional painting techniques while laying out aspects of contemporary society and history. Placed throughout her paintings, these motifs work as significant clues to into the history of an age and reflect on specific events identified by the artist.

Press release courtesy JARILAGER Gallery.