PREVIEW: Myths of Our Time
The group exhibition “Myths of Our Time” presents new work by three artists for whom Korea’s artistic, cultural and social landscape serves as a vital source of inspiration. While the work of each artist illustrates their own unique perspective and creative approach to artmaking, the title of the exhibition highlights their shared engagement with mythological traditions of storytelling.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac
The participating artists in sculpture, textile and painting, create narratives drawn from diverse cultural contexts are reimagined using a contemporary lens to address urgent issues relating to technological development, identity and notions of selfhood. Heemin Chung employs experimental painting techniques to build abstract three-dimensional structures atop her canvases. The voluminous lines of these poetic works are echoed in her sculptures as she investigates the complexities of communication in the Digital Age. She investigates the material potential of digital images as she translates them into the mediums of painting and sculpture. Her work interrogates the role of technology in society and how it has shaped contemporary approaches to art. She reimagines art historical genres, including the landscape and still life, through poetic visual metaphor, engaging with experimental techniques to explore the function of texture and volume in her work. Sun Woo fuses digital tools with analogue painting techniques to explore themes of consumption, identity and the body. She gathers diverse images to create digital collages using Photoshop, which she transfers onto canvas to create uncanny, layered compositions. Her work investigates the impact of technology on the human condition as she translates digitally produced sketches of fragmented bodies into paint. Her paintings address the potential of technology to extend the body beyond its physical bounds, creating hybridised corporeal forms entwined with machines, objects and animals. Zadie Xa draws upon her own background to inform an ongoing engagement with hybrid and diasporic identities, global histories, and folklore, as well as spiritual and religious rituals. She creates installations that incorporate painting, sculpture, textile, sound and performance. Xa’s art seeks to elevate narratives that have been erased and repressed by the West and occupying powers. For her, art is a means to analyse socio-political conditions and cultural behaviours through a lens of masquerade, play, costuming and storytelling. Zadie Xa presents an installation of painting and textile works that draws upon her Korean-Canadian background, referencing diverse artistic and craft traditions, including quilting, to explore the rich complexities of diasporic identity. The first time Xa has shown new work in Korea, the installation features painted self-portraits to mark her artistic homecoming.
Photo: Heemin Chung, Distant Calling (detail), 2022. Acrylic, oil, inkjet transferred gel medium on canvas. 230 x 190 cm (90.55 x 74.8 in). © the artist
Info: Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, 2F, 122-1 Dokseodang-ro, Hannam-dong, Yongsan-gu, Seoul, Korea, Duration: 6/1-25/2/2023, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, https://ropac.net/
