Now X Here: the KCC’s 5th call-for-artists exhibition

Hot on the heels of the excellent Korean Artists Association exhibition comes the KCCUK’s annual group show of young Korean artists.

NOW X HERE

THE 5TH UK KOREAN ARTISTS EXHIBITION
Exhibition Dates: 12 December 2012 – 23 January 2013

The Korean Cultural Centre UK is pleased to present the 5th Annual Exhibition of contemporary art by UK based Korean Artists: ‘Now X Here’ brings together the exciting and inspiring work of nine Korean artists each living and working in the UK.

Participating Artists:
Heeseung Choi | Han Byul Kang | Daewoong Kim | Woo Jin Kim | Fay Shin | Kyung Hwa Shon | Beomsik Won | Jin Woo Yoo | Hyesoo You

Since its inception, the UK Korean Artists’ Exhibition has been offering art student and recent graduates essential recognition and support at a crucial stage in their development. This annual showcase not only completes our offering for 2012 but also takes us into 2013 as we prepare to mark the milestone of half a decade since the KCCUK’s establishment.

From the pool of artists’ portfolios participants are selected, by a panel, based on their relevance to the open call theme, the understanding of visual language and originality of artistic development. The Panel of judges were: Nicholas Cullinan (International Contemporary Art Curator, Tate Modern), Jonathan Watkins (Director, IKON Gallery) and Nina Power (Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, Roehampton University).

Inspired by the KCCUK, its history and also location ‘Now X Here’ refers to the creativity of the present through presence. The notions of present and presence are useful for linking such themes of time and place, themes that are best explored in the context of the KCCUK in situ.

This show explores the tensions and play between city-life and inner-life, geometry and expression, where various genres align to disrupt the homogeneous identity of the artist or their work. ‘Now X Here’, the KCCUK’s 5th UK Korean Artists’ Exhibition is curated by Ji Hye Hong.

The participating artists and their artworks for the exhibition:

1. Heeseung Choi

Choi completed MFA at the Slade School of Fine Art in 2012. The silent and empty space is, in fact, infused with a sense of subtle stirring. The wall is about to collapse, tide surge, bells ring. But the effect of muted sound and washed-out colour are suspending the accident. Such a moment of halt is visualised by using paradoxical materials whose sound will never be heard. The cacophony exists in between the expectation and reality, making a room of imagery and resonation.

2. Han Byul Kang

Kang is currently studying MA in Fine Art at the Chelsea College of Art and Design. The pursuit of the ontological questions for an object and human being is visualised in the deliberately immature contours of any given space. The contours were developed into colour patches on the found objects or canvas and then freely laid on refracted spaces. The constellation of variables appears like they have been given the spontaneity to inhabit inside the space; they build up the space, penetrate the boundaries of its medium. This cleverly measured constellation invites the viewer to spot a certain point to complete the dialogue within.

3. Daewoong Kim

Kim is currently undertaking an MA in Photography at the Royal College of Art in London. Kim was selected in Tayler Wessing Photographic Portrait prize, hosted at the National Portrait Gallery in 2012. Kim’s portraiture series “Silence Within” started from portraying a subject of a Korean child in London, as a matter of fact, ruminating on one’s own memories of childhood. The isolation is visualised in the theatrical scene of the everyday place, with the autobiographical contexts expanding into a common sentiment.

4. Woo Jin Kim

Kim completed MFA at Goldsmith, University of London in 2012. Kim’s work is inspired by the images of those collected from photos, books and the internet. Re-organising these people’s lives and relationships are a form of portraiture that has been put into a literary reference. Such an ordinary circumstance leaves room for the viewers to speculate on the constellation of portraiture.

5. Fay Shin

Shin graduated an MFA from Goldsmiths, University of London in 2012. Shin alights on a precarious and trivial landscape. She transports us to sidewalks, backstreets or dead-ends, where she finds and transforms the unexpected humour and unconventional beauty and material into the canvas. The urban landscape scaled down to a flat, petit space around her. A collage of real life surfaces to an abstract landscape painting result in not only a clash of material but also an emotional collision.

6. Kyung Hwa Shon

Shon studied Painting and Drawing at School of the Art Institute of Chicago, then moved to London to participate in the residency programme at the Royal Academy Schools. The three large paintings of the landscape here give clues of her observations and interpretations of London’s unique architectural surroundings into the personal responses and sensory experience. The trace of the geometric facade of old brick buildings fades, while the free stroke of the colour field reveals the psychological state of encounter. In each canvas the geometrical elements and the abstract field seems to struggle to keep their balance yet eventually the latter engulfs the former.

7. Beomsik Won

Won completed MFA in Fine Art Media at the Slade School of Fine Art in 2012. His work presents an architectural, sculptural photograph of splendid yet ghostly composition. A fine collage technique creates another imaginary monument by mixing and accumulating a place of cultural, economic, entertainment and politics in varying degrees of scale. In the process of creating a composite, Won puts the intertwined convention of social structure into question with the buildings that are waiting to be recognised and hidden codes unravelled.

8. Jin Woo Yoo

Yoo complete MFA at the Slade School of Fine Art in 2010. A wall of mass produced pieces of paper appear as concrete bricks. Upon closer inspection each print has a repetitive etching that blends the energy of the piece. Such practice appears like a very oriental–calm asceticism, as the artist describes it, it is a recall of his experience of learning traditional calligraphy in Korea. Yoo’s work changes our sense of the interior whilst asking both the audience and fellow artists to examine the question of craftsmanship in their work.

9. Hyesoo You

You completed MFA at the Chelsea College of Art and Design. Her delightful objects combine many visual elements such as functional forms, kitsch motifs and garish colours. YOU refers to the work as a profession of faith where the form and the meaning both correspond and correlate. The transformation of everyday objects still lingers at the boundary between the function and non-function, fine art and design and raises the tension of the in-between. An array of found objects resonate not only the nostalgic history of the KCCUK but also its living interior atmosphere.

(automatically generated) Read LKL’s review of this event here.