South Korean Contemporary Art

Choi Soowhan creates meticulous, immaculate, yet expressive images by drilling minute holes of various sizes into black laminate, and then LED backlighting the piece. The result is art based on precision, where Choi masterfully manipulates material and light to create texture, form and substance. In Choi's work, we see both the natural and the manmade, rendered in meticulous detail through this highly skilled process of image making. 

Hong Sungchul's subtle and artful constructions pose questions about how we live in the virtual, and sometimes disconnected, world. In his 'Perceptual Mirror' series - made from gridded arrangements of identical solar LCD units that produce patterns of random, flickering, pixellation - he asserts this sense of impermanence and constant flux. Hong aims to reclaim a sense of intimacy, engagement and understanding in his work, where fast moving and blurry perceptions are slowed down and examined and the beauty of the simple and everyday are revealed.

Hwang Seontae's work takes the form of the 'light box', constructed from layers of printed and etched glass, depicting coolly delineated, contemporary interiors. The box has a self-contained light source which articulates the imagined scene. Sunlight enters through windows, casting pools and patterns of illumination and projecting shadowed forms across the silent spaces. The artist has made a stage-set for the action of the sun, its rays lighting the man made interior, bringing a moment of clarity and awareness.

Mari Kim uses the language of Manga, Disney and Pop Art to make her glossily realized paintings. Her images derive from a rich mixture of Western and Eastern cultural references. She produces pieces which explicitly reflect a pop sensibility and aesthetic back at her audience. These are rigorously graphic representations, assemblages of print, paint and mixed-media, flatly rendered, with no evidence of brush mark or hand.