Bahk, Seonghi is characterized by his works of charcoals hanging on air and formativeness engendered from them.

Bahk was born in 1966 in a small town with very few people living around. He naturally found wood as his work material in the natural surroundings, and his interest in using woods later expands to charcoal. He started to work with charcoal since the late 1980s. The process of wood changing into charcoal let him to discover the natural process of creation and extinction. This makes his charcoal works to be evaluated by domestic and international critics and collectors as oriental paintings/abstractions hanging on a fishing gut. 

He graduated from Chung Ang University and Milan Art Institute majoring in Sculpture. He held many individual exhibitions including in Gallery Artside in 2012, in Galerie Andres Thalmann (Switzerland) in 2011 and in Gallery Arte Contemporanea Jorge Shirley (Portugal) in 2006. His works are housed in Art Bank, Artpark Museum, Ark Restaurants Corp. (NY) and many more. 

Cha, Jongrye is well known for her works of layered wood plates carved and attached to the wall. Born in 1967, Daejeon, majored in Sculpture at Ehwa Women’s University, she held many private exhibitions in museums including Artside and Sunggok Art Museum. She is also exhibiting her works world-widely including in Vermont Studio Center-Red mill Gallery, Bill Lowe Gallery in United States and a few other places in Unites States, Hong Kong, Canada and Taiwan. Her works are also housed in Sunggok Art Museum (Seoul), Nampo Art Museum (Jeonnam), Plaza Hotel (Seoul) and JW Merriott Hotel (Zhengzhu in China.)

She establishes her own artistic style by sculpting natural patterns shown by the texture of woods. Even though we find the patterns of waves from some works and sharp peaks of mountains from other works, Cha emphasizes that she did not intend any of them. Her sculpture overwhelms the audience with its amorphous patterns. Cha does not coerce certain meaning on her works but provides infinite opportunity of imagination to her audience regardless of her own intention. 

Weaving intricate patterns and careful detail, Cheong Kwangho transforms abstract concept into real two and three dimensional images, filled with the promise of a story to be told, if you but have the time and the inclination to stop and listen.

Pots, flowers, leaves, fish, landscapes - copper veins pulsing with an energy and a lifeblood of awareness and balance, searching for the ties that bind and nourish, embracing a common heritage, while carving distinctive, personal statements on time and space, depth and perception, presence and absence. 

-Susan Baik 

  His works have uneven surfaces that means they are sculpture in relief. With colors put on the scratches they are very close to the paintings. Grinding work has a limitation in directions and it usually makes regular hexahedrons. Jung’s works represent architecture putting colors on the tilted small hexahedrons and they appears as cities, villages, and roads. This enhances the nature of paintings in the works. Riverside houses close to each other look like an European city rather than a Korean one. Or look like a construction on the deserted highland. However, his scenery doesn’t represent a particular region. It’s an image which comes from his mind through his own way. It is seen in the distance, far from the subjects. You can notice his attitude to contemplate it. Why does he focus on the scenery sculpture? The clue to the question is in his works similar to a stage. Interestingly, he majored in stage arts in Italy. His experience with the stage arts definitely affects the perspective of looking at the objects and works around him. He returned to sculpture in returning home though.   

Artist's note 2018

A late night, I saw my look in a place deserted on the side of a main street. The building that seemed to have been deserted for long. When had the shutter closed firmly been opened lastly? There remains every trace of the time passed on the shabby wall. The meaningless scribbles, the stains of the leaflets that must have been pasted and plucked out over and again. The wall shows the flow of time from the first pure moment until the present... The closed shutter keeps some parts of the past records of the building. The wall deserted... Records and fragments of the memory... I put my presence into the irregular incomplete traces.

On an entrance ceremony day in Mar. 1988, Dad passed away. I had taken on a new garb for the ceremony, but during the ceremony, I had to go to the funeral hall. On a dazzlingly bright day, I stood in the school playground for the ceremony, being dressed in a yellow clothing but soon I went to the basement funeral hall of University hospital… Wailing souls, pandemonium itself. The color of the day, a bright yellow light and a cold grey color [NO.88-1, 88-2]

Overlaid figures and memory

My past looks are stacked neatly on a void canvas. A sense of remorse conveyed from my past, encompassing joy and fear of the uncertain future in the process. I reflect on my looks that have changed over time. My memory incessantly changing from grief to joy, and from joy to regret, depending on my state of emotion. I search for the colors in my faded memory and pile them up to have them reflected on my current look. The colors of the day, and the memory of the day

My conceptions and behaviors internalized into my ego, and the oblivion intended to hide and conceal my looks. Again, I look back on my past by means of the colors. Piling up my past senses on the canvas that would develop. I try to find my current look in the color fields worn out. Each layer that would be revealed as an object through a physical intervention. It would recognize the reality as a canvas, escaping from the pain. It is like my prayer yearning incessantly to find my value of existence in the exposed society.

Kim, Eun-Ju has made large-scale drawings only with a pencil for about ten years. Countless pencil lines form waves and they form a sea. The artist who was born in Busan and has lived in Busan looks the sea differently from those who see it only in vacation time. Like looking into the inside of a familiar thing, the sea she sees is the sea seen from the inside of  waves, rather than the sea viewed from the outside. Besides, the sea never exists without the wind. Kim incorporates a roaring wind in her pencil lines to make the canvas roll. More imporatant things to the artist than motifs are surely breath and rhythm as she says "a wind blowing from the sea in my town has formed my breath and rhythm of the lines I draw." and they make her draw line by line with all her strength as "silent resistance" and "proof of life" against everyday life requires anonymity pitilessly. The pencils she broke a hundred times and numberless holes she made in a paper bring up the image of her intense works. " Just Drawing a Flower", an imaginary flower, begins from a little petal in the center of a picture and opens into a massive flower with its fluttering leaves. Long and short lines, hard or soft lines drawn on the thick paper evoke moderation and patience like embroidery created by ancient women. In a way, her works issuing out a threat like loud existence are the products of rage conquered by her passion, honesty and moderation.    

                               -  Kim, Airyung

Accumulation of objet, forming the shape of a nature. It does not have to be a tree, but pine tree is a representation of our nation, which has its roots in forests. As a natural object, tree is an expansion of natural-friendliness and oriental mise-en-scene. I want to step further to express dynamicity of organisms.

Numerous copper pipes’ cross-sections form an eternal pine tree, and I want to plant that to this earth. This is the way I love nature and the way I love myself, which is a part of the nature. Lastly, I express my thankfulness and respect to my eternal teacher, the nature.

-Excerpted from the artist’s note-

Lee was born in 1961, received Bachelor’s degree and Master’s degree of art from Kyunghee University. She had a few individual exhibition from Gallery BK in 2012, Sabina Gallery in 2010. Currently, her works are housed in National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea, Seoul Museum of Art, Sabina Art Museum and Samsung Culture Foundation.

Lee is a representative Korean sculptor. He was born in 1965, majored in Sculpture at Hongik University. He won the first place from 1998 Osaka Triennale, and won the third place from 2005 Japan Hyogo International Art Competition and 2008 Beijing Olympics Environment sculpture exhibition. Also, his works are publicly famous, so they can be easily seen in many hotels, hospitals and public buildings including in National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea, Osaka Modern Culture Art Center (Japan), Cornell University Herbert F. Johnson Museum(USA), Park Hyatt Hotel Washington D,C(USA), President Wilson Hotel(Swiss), Briton Place-UMU Restaurant(UK), Park Hyatt Hotel Zurich(Switzerland), Intercontinental Hotel(Swiss), and Crown Hotel(Australia).

Lee’s arts world is based on the relationship between nature and arts. He attracts the sources from mountains and fields into the world of art. He changes natural resources such as wood, iron, coal and stone to unique formats of arts. His works made by cutting and burning woods, sculpting coals, heating and bending iron possess uniqueness loved by people around the world. He finds a balance between natural resources and artificial works.

His artworks are emphasized by simple and strong visibility among other arcane modern artworks. This not only gives familiarity to the viewers but also becomes a propulsion to emphasize the nature, arts and the sense of the artist. 

An artist drawing lights with charcoal, Jae Sam Lee.

The ‘charcoal artist’ has used charcoal to draw for more than 20 years. Charcoal powders are usually used for sketching because of its powders not easily sticking to canvas. However, for Lee, charcoal contains his own philosophy and suits best to him. The source chosen to express his own feeling now starts his own story. Charcoal has its strength among softness, depth among lightness. His unique paintings are deep and sensitive reverberating within themselves. Also, throughout his arduous study, he came up with his own strategy to officially ensure people that charcoal has no problem in perpetual preservation through National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea, making collectors to be assured.

He has drawn bamboos, pines and apricot flowers until recently, but now being interested in moonlight reflected on water. Unlike the hyper realistic paintings he drew until now, he abstractly expresses the images of falls, fogs and gardens with ponds reflected in his mind. Current works can be called as poems while past ones are called novels.

He said, “I tried to eliminate a lot of things from canvas by emphasizing my own feeling and scenery of the inside. I want to express my feelings about the cycle and origin of life, which are symbolized by moon and water.” For him, moonlight is “a psychological haven” of himself and he tries to express “not only the moonlight itself but also the emotion and aesthetics included in it.”

He was born in 1960, majored in Painting at Gangreung University and Hongik University graduate school. 

Lee is well known for his hyper realistic works of the trace of spread expressed by throwing brush with ink to white Korean paper. Having explored to find the ways to express Korean sensibility, he drew objects such as flowers and fruits in 1990s, but has been using brushes as his main motif since 2000.

His paintings are so realistic that the brushes drawn on papers seem to be actual brushes that can be used. His paintings of brush drawn with ink and oil paint blur the boundary between oriental and western painting, abstract and realistic painting.

Lee evokes his innate eagerness toward expression and feels freedom by laying or leaning the canvas made of Korean paper on the wall and throwing brushes to mark the traces of brush and ink. He said, “In my paintings, hyper realism, abstraction and action coexist.

An art critic, Hangseop Shin, evaluates Lee’s paintings that “it is hard to believe his paintings are made by human hands. They are in the external boundary of hyper realism or photo realism.”

Lee was born in 1963, majoring in Painting at Gyemyong University. In 2009, he held individual exhibitions in Gana Art New York (New York) and Gallery Tsubaki(Tokyo), also participating in various international art fairs.  

Lee Kyouhong(b.1972) completed his B.F.A at Kookmin University in Seoul, Korea and earned his Master’s degree from Edinburgh College of Art in UK. Awards received include a short-listed of Coburg Glass Prize in Germany and CERAMIX Glass Art Awards Special Jury award in Korea. He also created large-scale, site-specific commissions including those at Haeinsa Temple, Jinbu Railway Station, St. Clara Abbey, Korea University Hospital, Shinsa-dong Catholic Church in Korea. His work is exhibited and collected internationally including the permanent collections of theEuropean Museum of Modern Glass (Kunstsammlungen der Veste) in Coburg, and Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung Museum in Munich, Germany.

Born in Damyang in 1969, Lee received Bachelor’s degree and Master’s degree from Chosun University and Ph. D from Yonsei University School of Visual Communication. Lee received ‘The Artist of the year’ award in 2009 and ‘the 22nd Sun Art Award’ in 2010. His works are housed in Blue House, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea, South Korea Embassy in the United States (Washington DC, US), Yale University (Connecticut, USA), Uli Sigg Collection (Luzern, Switzerland), Bund 18 Creative Center (Shanghai, China) and many more.

Lee’s works are resurrection of old famous paintings in a virtual space combining sound and animation. He restructures the works of the 18th century using the techniques of 21st century by inserting them to screen and transforming them. For example, he reconstructs Sunflower of Gogh by showing the flowers blooming and waning on a digital screen. He tries to resurrect the old paintings of famous painters by giving them a ‘movement’ through technology. He emphasizes the importance of “easily communicating modern art to the public” and “letting people to feel warm sensibility in the digital age dominated by cold machines.”

“Pero que pasa si el nino tiene a un artisa dentro?”

Leonardo a yellow haired with brown eyes is a 4 years old artist. Born in Novara in Northern Italy he started his endeavour in art by doodling in his father’s office. Leo lives in Madrid where in his house full of his paintings. Each time Leo engages with drawing he begins with an idea that turns into something completely different, for example; a drawing of car ending up being a crocodile or a super hero turning into a monster.

Leo constantly tries new methodology by incorporating various materials and techniques including plasticine, chalk, cutting and pasting. He loves mixing colour which his mother helps. Leo loves listening to music while painting, sometimes he even dances.

Leo’s wants to be a super hero when he grows up. His favourites are Spiderman, Batman or Ironman.

“I like going to school, even though I have to work hard. Capital letters, lower case, all the numbers…so much to learn. My teachers show me little tricks and ways to memorize it all, and when I get home my dad and I practice on really big papers and colour it so it ends up being castles or cities. Like all children, I love stories. And my way of telling them is through my paintings.”

Nam June Paik (1932–2006), internationally recognized as the "Father of Video Art," created a large body of work including video sculptures, installations, performances, videotapes and television productions. He had a global presence and influence, and his innovative art and visionary ideas continue to inspire a new generation of artists.

Born in 1932 in Seoul, Korea, to a wealthy industrial family, Paik and his family fled Korea in 1950 at the outset of the Korean War, first to Hong Kong, then to Japan. Paik graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1956, and then traveled to Germany to pursue his interest in avant-garde music, composition and performance. There he met John Cage and George Maciunas and became a member of the neo-dada Fluxus movement. In 1963, Paik had his legendary one-artist exhibition at the Galerie Parnass in Wuppertal, Germany, that featured his prepared television sets, which radically altered the look and content of television.

After immigrating to the United States in 1964, he settled in New York City where he expanded his engagement with video and television, and had exhibitions of his work at the New School, Galerie Bonino and the Howard Wise Gallery. In 1965, Paik was one of the first artists to use a portable video camcorder. In 1969, he worked with the Japanese engineer Shuya Abe to construct an early video-synthesizer that allowed Paik to combine and manipulate images from different sources. The Paik-Abe video synthesizer transformed electronic moving-image making. Paik invented a new artistic medium with television and video, creating an astonishing range of artworks, from his seminal videotape Global Groove (1973) that broke new ground, to his sculptures TV Buddha (1974), and TV Cello (1971); to installations such as TV Garden (1974), Video Fish (1975) and Fin de Siecle II (1989); videotapes Living with the Living Theatre (1989) and Guadalcanal Requiem (1977/1979); and global satellite television productions such as Good Morning Mr. Orwell, which broadcast from the Centre Pompidou in Paris and a WNET-TV studio in New York City Jan. 1, 1984.

Paik has been the subject of numerous exhibitions, including two major retrospectives, and has been featured in major international art exhibitions including Documenta, the Venice Biennale and the Whitney Biennial. The Nam June Paik Art Center opened in a suburb of Seoul, South Korea, in 2008.

Rae-Hyun Park was born in 1920 and grew up during the 1950s and was influenced by the artistic atmosphere of the time. The 1950s can be said to have been dominated by Abstract Expressionism, a form of painting that prioritised dramatic brushstrokes and expressed ideas about organic nature, spirituality and the sublime. Much of the focus was on the formal techniques of painting, and ideas of action painting were conflated with the political freedom of the United States society as opposed to the strictures nature of the Soviet bloc.

In the Post-War period the lens of modernism was focused, in terms of internationally, on developments in New York City. The Second World War had brought many important creatives to the city in exile from Europe, leading to a substantial pooling of talent and ideas. Influential Europeans that came to New York and provided inspiration for American artists included Piet Mondrian, Josef Albers and Hans Hoffmann, who between them set the grounds for much of the United States’ explosive cultural growth in the subsequent decades.

Key artists of the Abstract Expressionist Generation included Jackson Pollock (who innovated his famed drip, splatter and pour painting techniques), Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Frank Kline, Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still and Adolph Gottlieb. It was a male dominated environment, but necessary revisionism of this period has underlined the contributions of female artists such as Lee Krasner, Joan Mitchell, and Louise Bourgeois, amongst others.

Park was born in 1969 and graduated from Busan Dong-Ah University majoring in Sculpture. He held his individual exhibitions in many places including Hada Contemporary Gallery (London, U.K), Dennos Museum (Michigan, U,S,A) in 2014, Nampo Museum (Goheung, Korea) in 2013, Artissu Gallery (Taipei, Taiwan), Hada Contemporary Gallery, (London, U.K), Kips Gallery (Newyork, U.S.A) and Blank Space Gallery (Newyork, U.S.A).

In the mid 1990s, he spent about five years in India meditating. His experience there changed his whole life and art, and he realized that art is not a subject to achieve or finish but bears its meaning in its beautiful process. For this reason, his artworks show the trace of intense labor. Carefully wrapping an object’s exterior with aluminum wire and working with wire mesh clearly show this aspect. His works seem to be a hand drawing with pencil at first sight, but when observed carefully, they are shaped with layered wire mesh, which is a great harmonization of planes and three-dimensional shapes connecting artist’s thinking, time and labor. 

The expression, “like a jewel” is used in literature and arts to express the meaning of “beautiful and precious.” The beauty of flower, butterflies and rainbow disappears as time passes, but jewel never changes forever. Park views a jewel as an object of vanity and extravagance, derivative of possessiveness, materialistic value and strong materiality, so he focuses on the gemstone which bears a meaning before being processed.

He finds his origin of his work, ‘Gemstone,’ from the time when he was hiking and found a small black stone. He put it into his pocket and found it had turned into a ‘shiny,’ ‘cannot be abandoned’ object after his journey, feeling a respect for the absolute values. Since his first presentation of gemstone series in 2010, he is keep presenting series of Gemstone garden, Gemstone towers and Gem. Born in 1961, he graduated from Seoul National University and Graduate School of Seoul National University majoring in Sculpture, and held 15 times of individual exhibitions as well as few other group exhibitions. In 1997, he won the first place in Freeman Fellowship Asian Award (Freeman Foundation/U.S.A), and completed Vermont Freeman Fellowship. His works are housed in Fairmont Hotel Singapore and Ivis Hotel (Seoul).

Son is known as a ‘3D painter integrating lights.’ ‘3D painting’ he invented has received a lot of attention, even being introduced in Korean Middle School Arts textbook.

His ‘3D painting’ focuses on layering ‘polycarbonate’, a type of bullet proof glass. Landscapes and trees drawn with oil make layers being represented in 3D format. They initially present oriental mood but once LED light is turned on transformed into a magical three-dimensional artwork.

He was born in 1967, graduated from Chosun University majoring in Sculpture and received his master’s degree from New York Pratt Institute. Starting from his individual exhibition in New Gallery (NY), he worked in Creation Studio in Gwangju City Museum, Ssamji Studio. Also, he participated in Gwangju Biennale (1997, 2004) and Sevilla Biennale (Spain, 2008) and Washington Smithsonian invitation exhibition. 

Her work focuses on the color relationships and shapes found in nature. Landscape, trees, clouds, changing colors of the season, etc.

It can be a small detail that starts the process of directing the appearance and starts a conversation with the color.

The shapes included in the configuration are intuitive. One shape tells you the following and one color tells you what color will follow.

She used to work mainly in pastels, but recently she has diversified into other media.