Philip Loersch, Seongjoon Hong

Flip Over, 2024, Installation view, ThisWeekendRoom. Courtesy of the artist and ThisWeekendRoom, Seoul

ThisWeekendRoom is pleased to curate the duo show Flip Over with Philip Loersch and Seongjoon Hong from January 12th to February 17th, 2024. This exhibition explores the power of ambivalence hidden in the artistic practices of these two artists, who are based in Germany and South Korea respectively. They move between form and materiality, interested in dismantling the solidity of culture and logic created by previous generations and discovering a renewed visual vocabulary in between. They also explore illusions realized on different mediums such as stone, paper, canvas, and wood, and their desire and curiosity about the act of painting/drawing are evident in their work.

필립 로에쉬 Philip Loersch, Herma, 2023, pencil, China ink, acrylic, varnish on soapstone, 30 x 24.5 x 15 cm. Courtesy of the artist and ThisWeekendRoom, Seoul

Philip Loersch has been working on drawings, sculptures and installations that take mathematical formulas, scientific propositions and symbols of cultural origin and give them an aesthetic dimension in his way. Often on the surface of stone or blank pages of books, he persistently draws sections of pages from books on Greek civilization, Donatello, minimalism, color, and more. His work refutes the power and weight of history that books imply while transforming them into unknown objects whose contents can no longer be easily accessed, so that solid knowledge could be inevitably adjusted. In short, he creates fine cracks in the logical structures created in search of principles or answers and looks forward to more cultural diversity and room for formative imagination to be absorbed into the work, beyond the letters sealed by the hard surface and heavy mass.

홍성준 Seongjoon Hong, Layers of the air 20, 2024, acrylic on canvas, 53 x 45.5 cm. Courtesy of the artist and ThisWeekendRoom, Seoul

On the other hand, Seongjoon Hong‘s Illusion, which is infinitely thin and light, is based on the recognition that the painting is the result of the combination of numerous commodity materials. He has repeatedly drawn scenes with layers of smooth, thin, or translucent membranes, secretly exposing the flat canvas surface and the materials that compose it. Now he goes a step further and begins to devise a form in which the material utilized as a means of painting on the canvas can stand on itself. Hong uses the dual mechanism in his works; returning the images he reproduces into the physical conditions of the painting, and extracting the hint of representation from the material itself.

Flip Over, 2024, Installation view, ThisWeekendRoom. Courtesy of the artist and ThisWeekendRoom, Seoul

Loersch digs into the accumulation of texts and visual symbols that solidify the canons of art and culture with his visual language, while Hong builds a network of relationships between visual representation and physical experience by extending the characteristics of painting materials. In this way, they faithfully fulfil one side of the representation, but then flip over to the other side, dreaming of physical combinations and variations that will offset the sanctity of the old discourse.

ThisWeekendRoom
30 Hannam-daero 42-gil, Yongsan-gu, Seoul, KR
+82 70-8868-9120

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