2020.9.23 – 10.18
Guim Tio, Song Jin hwa, Choi Suin

Since 1999, the Artside gallery has been committed to presenting the works of the most current and significant Korean and international contemporary artists in the international art scene. Since 2001, the gallery has established itself as a leading venue by introducing Chinese avant-garde artists such as Yue Minjun, Fang Lijun, Zhou Chunya, and Liu Ye in Korea. In 2008, Artside Gallery founded a branch in the Dashanzi Art Zone, Beijing. This new gallery has reduced the physical and psychological distance between Seoul and Beijing. Relocated in Tongui-dong in 2010, Artside gallery continues to play a key role in developing the art market and promoting various artists.

Guim Tio Zarraluki, a young artist from Barcelona, Spain, is well-known for his series, “Magazine.”
The work he has been engrossed in is pictorial experiments on human. He has explored human beings through the way of reproducing anonymous models in photographs. In the way that he depicts a certain part of a person abstractly or stands it out, he has posed questions on semblance, prejudice, and self-identity. Recently, he has presented a series of landscapes, posing a new question. The characteristics of the series, which started from 2017, are transcendental landscapes and individuals portrayed like dots. In these pieces, humans are described as weak and lonely beings who are put to an infinite nature. The human beings in the monotone, abstract nature do not resist or worship, but just stand alone casting long shadows. Viewers will find Zarraluki’s artworks leading them to walk into a scene of memory that does not exist in reality, and to wander around the memory of life as adventurers.

Song Jin-hwa, who specialized in the Department of Korean Painting, engraves a strong yet tender femininity onto wood. In the early years of her career, she was interested in what Korean painting is. Later she grew engrossed in her personal experiences. She cuts women resembling herself out of wooden logs: a woman looking as if threatening with a knife; a woman carrying a soju bottle, and a woman freely flying to the sky. Song describes women in various shapes, sometimes humorously and sometimes scarily. She shows the experiences that she had as a woman warm-heartedly through graceful expressions. Viewers will thus gain consolation and empathy from the mini Song Jin-hwas. Song expresses problems anyone may suffer, such as loneliness, dejection, pain, and violence, in her own style. And she uses abandoned wooden logs for her work, which implies an attempt to sublimate a lonely and sad life artistically.

The work of Choi Suin does not present still objects or landscapes. At a glance, her pieces appear to be scenery but they are actually close to roughly moving scenes. Choi often compares her work to a play. Her canvas contains characters and situations, and conflicts arising from them. Like a camera takes a moment, she describes a split second. The objects represented as trees, rocks, waves, and flame can be thought of as characters who appear in a scene in Choi’s mind. People and situations that she encounters in her daily life stir up her mind from time to time. On all such occasions, waves dash against rocks or a big living thing settles itself in a rugged terrain. There is nothing stable. They continuously move and compose a story. If you trace a clue hidden in Choi’s work, you will find emotions Choi wants to disclose. The emotions – elaborately colored hatred, confrontation and pain – perform a play on the stage of her mind.

ARTSIDE Gallery
15, Jahamun-ro 6-gil, Jongno-gu, Seoul, Korea
+82 2 725 1020

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