Hanmi Gallery is pleased to present its 8th interim exhibition ‘The Traces: collective surroundings’, works by London based Korean artists Yoonsuk Choi, Jinhee Park and Seoyeoung Won. Inspired by daily life and objects, the artists showcase a series of works through synchronic depiction.

 

The aesthetic nature of daily life and objects found and captured by artists has been a great source of creativity for a long time. Not merely contemporary art, but also a number of preceding works of the 1960s and 1970s have shown the recognition and reification of ordinary life and objects. Such a trend in the art world was even more accelerated by the recent immersion in the pleasure of popular culture and changes in perception towards our surroundings.

 

‘The Traces: collective surroundings’ invites the audience to share the artists’ inward gaze and intriguing translations of surroundings. As often related, contemporary art creation does not seem to require canonical experiences of radical social isolation and private revolt by artists. It has been rather displaced by the fragmentation of contemporaneity with diverse translations and appreciation of what surrounds us. We may now empirically inhabit the synchronic rather than diachronic. Our visual language is today dominated by the thematic of temporality.
The featured artists work on the theme of ‘the traces of every day and everything’. They embrace and collect the easily forgettable moments of repetitive routine, evaporable images and beauty of daily life and objects. The works show serenity, unique and vibrant aspects of daily life. These extraordinaries of the ordinaries refreshingly change the way in which we look at surroundings and share the fun in finding such aspects.

 

Yoonsuk Choi works on the notion of time and its fragments through various mediums. He materialises and visualises the rather humdrum moments and memories of routine through and by the perpetual processes based upon the tireless individual collection of daily life and objects. For example, his annual project ‘Mass of The Year’ is made out of the receipts which he collected for a calendar year. After shredding, layering and weaving the receipts, he shapes a sphere-like mass containing the memories collected and reproduced. Similarly, one of his drawing series ‘1073’ is a result of numerous collective lines penned in black, with which he filled up the paper, capturing the inward and outward changes of his surroundings. The works could be seen as the visual connotation of moments he collected.

 

Jinhee Park finds traces of nature in everyday life. Although the city and surroundings are maze-like and filled with skyscrapers, cars, signboards and asphalt-paved roads, the artist still finds fundamental components of nature. For instance, his recent works show his great interest in plywood. Plywood is just a basic material that is mass produced. It is normally cut into the same regular size, and it is one of the most widely used materials. The artist finds the traces of nature in the pattern on the surface of the plywood and illustrates how the pattern is similar to that of running water, blowing wind, and the flames of fire. The featured works ‘The Window’ and ‘The Pause’ markedly show the appreciation and closeness of the traces he finds in his surroundings.

 

Seoyeoung Won starts his works by finding referential objects from daily life. Then, he reinterprets the objects. Within the process of reinterpretation, he traces and tests various means of visual expression in paintings and installation art in the photography studios he meticulously sets up. The chosen objects often become a part of the installation and resemble a painting in the photograph taken in the illusionary studio set. The artist perceives and takes a daily object as a subject for investigating the relationship between an object and space, the cognition of images and means of visual expression. His works not only trace other aspects of daily objects but also question the status of images touching the means of installation, painting and photography.

Curated by Hyukgue KWON.