![\"\"](\"https:\/\/static-edge.kiaf.org\/web\/2025\/08\/27162855\/Untitled-1996-Mixed-media-145-x-209-cm.jpg\")
<\/p>\nOh Se-Yeol<\/p>\n
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Untitled, Mixed media, 145 x 209 cm, 1996<\/em><\/p>\n Gallery Joeun is pleased to present Oh Se-Yeol: Since 1965, a solo exhibition celebrating the 60th anniversary of Oh Se-Yeol\u2019s artistic debut, on view from August 28 to September 20, 2025. This exhibition offers a comprehensive overview of Oh\u2019s artistic journey, spanning from his early figurative works to his recent paintings that merge semi-abstraction with symbols, numbers, and found objects. Guided by the conviction that \u201cthe moment one strives to paint well, purity disappears,\u201d Oh has consistently pursued the essence of painting through simplicity. This exhibition provides a rare opportunity to encounter his \u201cuntitled masterpieces\u201d in one place.<\/p>\n Purity and Improvisation: Six Decades of Art<\/p>\n Oh Se-Yeol\u2019s practice has always sprung from the everyday. Bottle caps, buttons, spoons, neckties, clumsily cut images, and fragments of text\u2014objects reminiscent of children\u2019s toys\u2014find new life in his hands. These humble materials transcend their status as mere objects, resonating with poetic lyricism and leading viewers into a childlike world embedded in the unconscious. At times, a wooden basin or a wicker basket becomes a frame, while discarded objects are reborn as integral parts of his paintings. His art continuously crosses boundaries, bridging reality and imagination, daily life and art.<\/p>\n Oh\u2019s pictorial method is equally distinctive. He reverses raw canvas, layers oil paint repeatedly while stripping away its oils, and embraces the cracks that time naturally inscribes on the surface. Eschewing brushes, he often turns to sharp tools\u2014knives and awls\u2014to scratch, incise, and scrape his canvases, generating free-form marks that embody his pictorial identity. Beneath the apparent simplicity of his works lies an accumulation of layered colors and dense textures, condensed into an expressive power born of immediacy and honesty. Childlike lines and forms reflect his inner self as an \u201cadult with the heart of a child,\u201d while his monochromatic backgrounds bear the stratified traces of passing time.<\/p>\n His unique artistic language soon attracted international attention. In 1984, he became the only Korean artist to record a sale at FIAC in Paris, an event that transcended mere market success to signify Korean contemporary art\u2019s resonance on the global stage.<\/p>\n Untitled, Mixed media, 100 x 80 cm, 2015<\/em><\/p>\n A Language in Progress: Semiotics of Suggestion<\/p>\n Since the 1990s, Oh\u2019s series of numbers has epitomized the essence of his practice. The uneven repetition of digits from one to ten feels at once as familiar as a classroom blackboard and as fleeting as a playground after a day\u2019s play. For Oh, numbers are less symbolic than they are a fundamental language\u2014absorbed into life and emotion, learned at birth, and used to record time and human relationships. They are not fixed symbols but an endlessly recurring \u201cpresent tense.\u201d The numbers on his canvases are not mere signs, but meditations on existence and time itself.<\/p>\n Portraits of Loss and Recovery<\/p>\n Another central body of work, his portraits, encapsulates profound humor and resonance within seemingly simple forms. Shadows of war and an unstable childhood surface in figures marked by missing eyes, noses, or ears. Yet these absences are counterbalanced by warm hues and healing objects that transform despair into innocence, wounds into renewal. Colors fade and weather, only to resurface in sudden brilliance, echoing both the fragility of memory and the enduring human narrative.<\/p>\n This interplay of loss and recovery is reflected in his working ethos as well. The fact that all his works are titled Untitled belongs to the same logic. \u201cMost painters begin with a plan in mind and work toward a conclusion,\u201d he explains. \u201cI have never done that. The beginning and the end are always different\u2014I never know where a work will end.\u201d His paintings thus embrace unpredictability, resembling the \u201cuntitled masterpieces\u201d children leave behind in playground sand at dusk.<\/p>\n Far from being a mere retrospective, this exhibition is a testament to an artist who has preserved the value of \u201cpurity\u201d across decades of change, while illuminating new dimensions of a practice that continues to evolve.<\/p>\n Gallery Joeun WEBSITE<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0Instagram<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0ARTSY<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","categories":[50,51],"class_list":["post-56260","insights","type-insights","status-publish","hentry","category-insight","category-stories"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.0","language":"en","enabled_languages":["ko","en"],"languages":{"ko":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false}}},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kiaf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/insights\/56260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kiaf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/insights"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kiaf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/insights"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kiaf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kiaf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/static-edge.kiaf.org\/web\/2025\/08\/27162950\/Untitled-2015-Mixed-media-100-x-80-cm.jpg\")
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\n3, Itaewon-ro 55 ga-gil, Yongsan-gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea
\n+82-2-790-5889<\/p>\n