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Cloud Matter

Cloud Matter

Aug 24 - Sep 24, 2022

23, Hyoja-ro 7-gil, Jongno-gu, Seoul, 03044, Rep. of KOREA

FREE

Tue-Sat 10:30am - 6pm

This exhibition was designed to show the latest works of the 14 participating artists in the Artspace3 abstract art exhibition trilogy "One Seeing This Also Thinks That" (2019), "Your Life Is Abstraction" (2019), and "Virtual Shadow Casts on the Sky of Data Interface" (2020), that were under the joint planning of Kang Seok-ho and me. It has already been three years since the first exhibition was held, so there must have been changes in the lives and works of the artists. Each methodology is different, but all of these writers are formalizing an invisible and abstract world using the body and matter as tools that are present here and now. For them, expressing inner impulse as colors, capturing ideal relationships between pure sculpture elements, or past historical abstract attitudes that projected an existential body are the default values that have already been learned. Added to this is the sense of small everyday experiences (Kim Winter Gyeoul, Kim Minkyung, Park Hyungji), contemporary interest in the cosmic dimension (Park So young), and the response to matter in the digital media environment (Park Hyunjung, Seol Gwen, Yoon Doohyun, Joo Sla). The process of formative thinking that creates a form that is nowhere (Bä Hejum, Lee Min Jung, Hwang Sue Yon) or the problem of drawing a world without an object of instruction (Sung Sikyung, Jung Hyun-doo, Han Sungwoo) is still a valid topic. The attitude that emphasizes the aesthetics of plastic art itself, which faded into the background within the context of postmodernism, has emerged anew as a remarkable phenomenon since the 2010s. While Korean artists in the 2000s filled the vacancy that emptied overheated metadiscourse with daily observation and inspiration, since the 2010s many younger Korean artists have been paying more attention to events happening in themselves than to external phenomena, and are shaping their thoughts, senses, and imaginations with pure formative elements in a state that has loosened the relationship between what does the referring and what is referred to. Through this exhibition, I hope one follows the artists' journey of chasing invisible things that exist in a state like clouds that clearly have physical reality but are intangible. They step lightly on the surface of reality through matter, intentionally widening the gap between language and image. It is often said that one is trying to catch a floating cloud. It is a metaphor for those who tell vague and abstract stories unrealistic dreamers. However, clouds ― are also physical matter that is clearly real. By scientific definition, clouds are a collection of tiny droplets or ice crystals floating in the atmosphere by rising air currents because they are so light. Isn't it so beautiful to be matter that is not bound to the ground? The ambiguous state of matter at the boundary between water, ice and vapor become a metaphor for freedom to go anywhere and a source of poetic imagination because of its ambiguity. We need an imaginary margin from an image that doesn't refer to obvious things. Just like we need a moment to look at the clouds and let our minds wander. "If there is anything more beautiful than clouds in the world, show me. Clouds are a plaything and the most beautiful, priceless thing in the world." Herman Hesse, Peter Camenzind In memory of Kang Seok Ho. May he remain like a cloud, (Curator Lee Eunju)

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