30 Jan - 05 Feb 2012
Utopia! presents two diverse new bodies of work by Hyewon Han and Garam Kim. This exhibition explores their continued and shared interest in the relationship between body and space. The installation by Hyewon Han was conceived as a response to a special site, and she reflects on its unique physical attributes and history, resulting in a considered visualization of the posthumous transformation of being and the ideas of presence and/or absence. Garam Kim draws inspiration from fleeting perspectives of space. The unique colours and oil mediums that are used result from Kims sensitivity to subject matter and execution, a common feature of her work.
La Disparition by Hyewon Han
Utopia: a no-where. A Utopia, in the sense that it is an imaginary ideal place which mirrors human desires.
The present exhibition space, an ancient crypt, bears witness to one of our most common desires: that of eternity, as witnessed by the dead represented in marble.
Bringing into play the particularity of space, the La Disparition series seeks to respond to the question of no-place of desire by means of material language, here, drawings.
Because drawings are colour-neutral, they manifest the absence of nuance, the non-desire. The empty drawings construct an immersing space where viewers are invited to feel the desire to see a thing and to form, virtually, a visual element.
Each drawing contains a delimited space tracing disappeared object, which incites a construction of virtual geometric space. This imaginary space might refer to the geometricized body, to the symmetric architecture of the crypt, and to the Utopia which exists only in our imagination.
Untitled by Garam Kim
Kim defines Utopia as the state of coexistence, a harmony of different concepts and constructs, rather than a faultless ideal state.
This present series of paintings originates from her reflections and observations on fragments of reality. The multiple time-spaces, interpreted as visual elements and reconstructed in an improvisational manner in oil painting, are invoked onto the surface of the canvas.
She has chosen to use canvases as they give a human scale and serve as a field in which the body attains the heights of its expressivity, with the movement inscribed on the surface of the canvas bearing witness to our existence.
The apparent absence of convergence in form throughout the series of abstract paintings opens up the possibility of conciliatory responses.
Also, being untitled, each painting invites the viewer to have diverse interpretations from different perspectives.
