JARILAGER Gallery returns to Seoul with a dynamic selection of contemporary paintings, reflecting the spirit of the gallery's thriving international program. This exhibition features exciting new works, including those by artists like Rose Electra Harris and Danny Romeril. Additionally, it showcases unique creations by longstanding friends, such as Roy Aurinko, Florence Hutchings, Galina Munroe, Jen Orpin, and Matthew Stone.

Here is my favorite place takes on a larger scale to explore notions of eu-topia, a concept beautifully elucidated by Lyman Tower Sargent as 'the one existing place whose conditions are so favorable that there is complete contentment'. Set within domestic, urban, or ethereal surroundings, these canvases delve into the complex relationship between the artists and their own physical or immaterial sanctuaries—spaces where painting becomes a joyful communion with the innermost self. Here, the studio, home gardens, beloved city corners, or the very fabric of the canvas itself serve as loci amoeni where authentic expression can bloom. Challenging the boundaries of both representation and abstraction, most of the paintings start from something figurative—be it an object, a landscape, a plant, a childhood memory—which transforms into a non- or hyper-image of the artists' favorite place. This passage is everything but easy for the painters, as they dig deeply into themselves to unleash the final form. It's a voyage where they often find themselves not entirely in command, navigating the uncharted territories of instincts, time, and worries.

Some of these paintings happen quickly, rooted in violent gestural connections between the body and the canvas. Roy Aurinko's and Matthew Stone's paintings are all about this kind of instinctive connection, sometimes brutal, sometimes sublime. Whereas Aurinko's colour-clashes are proudly 'analog' in their making, Matthew Stone combines physical immediacy with the possibilities of the digital, to generate vortexes that elevate tactility to the nth power. Some other paintings have been emerging for weeks, their composition getting clearer in the ritual of painting every day. To get more involved into their artworks, Rose Electra Harris and Florence Hutchings endure a long journey with them. Their process becomes about time and about casting shadows and shapes again and again over simple domestic or floral patterns, until they generate phantastic atmospheres out of ordinary settings.

By letting us into their sanctuary, the artists bravely expose their vulnerabilities, for there is no locus amoenusuntouched by its counterpart of fears and distress. For Galina Munroe painting also means a haven where to reconcile desires for resolution. She depicts serene female figures and delicate flowers as a way to tend to her 'inner garden' and to exorcise the challenges and traumas associated with her personal experience of womanhood. Typically, a locus amoenus is not discovered at the start of the journey but emerges from the dust settled after tumultuous struggles. Shrouded by the smoke of battles, the artists' cherished places also reflect nuanced subtleties, capturing the delicate tremors of life alongside the grandeur of mystical sentiments. In this context, Jen Orpin and Danny Romeril deliver bittersweet portrayals of urban landscapes. In Orpin's work, the hyper-realistic depiction of bridges and streets of her city, Manchester, conceals potent emotional hues of bewilderment and familiarity at the same time. These are evident through the weight of the heavy grey skies, hinting at a profound process of emotional projection. On the other hand, Romeril's urban scenery, featuring rooftops and industrial chimneys together with natural elements, takes on a more childish tone, showcasing vibrant and lively colour palettes that exude a sense of playful belonging.

Here is my favourite place is an invitation to join the artists where they are most exposed as human beings, in the place they love, doing the things that they love. Their intimate places, now open to sharing, resonate profoundly with ours. We, as viewers, come in, come closer, and stand bare too.

Press release courtesy JARILAGER Gallery.