Matumoto Takahiro, Munehiro Yoshimura, Choongseok Han

Installation View of ‘Imagination・Always’ at Gallery Woo

Gallery Woo will hold an exhibition titled “Imagination• Always” from February 22nd (Thursday) to March 10th (Sunday), 2024.

Most of the things that make up our lives, such as what we eat, wear, ride, and enjoy, are the results of imagination. Human beings’ most characteristic activity, imagination, is manifested concretely through images. Those who primarily use the fundamental power of creating images, possibly as one of the final outcomes of imaginative activity, are ‘artists’. And these artists will not cease imagining as long as their lives continue.

Installation View of ‘Imagination・Always’ at Gallery Woo

With attention to the expressions of ‘imagination’ spread throughout life, our gallery presents the exhibition “Imagination• Always.” The artists featured in this exhibition are Munehiro Yoshimura (b. 1961 Japan), Han Chooseok (b. 1981 Korea), and Takahiro Matsumoto (b. 1986 Japan).

Munehiro Yoshimura, little red riding hood, 48.5x38cm, oil on canvas, 2022

Munehiro Yoshimura, a painter from Japan, perfectly depicts the world of imagination by drawing spaces and figures between reality and surrealism. Familiar yet strange images, seeming to exist in reality, represent the ‘inter-world’ between reality and imagination. The intermediate world depicted by this veteran artist born in 1961 well demonstrates a new realm of thought, as Gaspare Buonomo mentioned, that we need to develop from the imaginative world we imagine.

Han Choongseok, Thinking cat, 34.8×27.3cm, acrylic on korean cotton, 2024

Han Choongseok communicates his thoughts through his unique style of depicting animals and people. In 2024, he begins a new story with his latest work. In this exhibition, artist Han Chungseok goes beyond his previous narratives to reveal another aspect of relationships. Through the new subject of thorny trees appearing in his works, he adds interest with new stories of endurance and suffering due to intertwined relationships. Through the new works presented in the exhibition, we can see that the artist’s imagination continues.

Matsumoto Takahiro, Untitled, 68.5 x 12.5 x 16.5 cm, Painted on camphorwood gold leaf bass leaf charcoal, 2023

Takahiro Matsumoto creates mythical beings by carving wood, simplifying human faces that seem vividly lifelike or adorning bizarre bodies reminiscent of centaurs with gold leaf. Matsumoto’s works, born from imagination and realized by the artist’s fingertips, often reveal the content we have experienced or been educated about, such as environments or myths, while also allowing us to feel the joy and mystery of imaginative activities.

Living in the present, we enjoy and benefit from the results of someone’s imagination in the past, living within them. From this exhibition where three artists express their philosophies through their unique imaginations, I hope you can explore the stories and emotions imagination brings to humans, the joy of exploring new worlds, and the pleasure of continuing imagination.

Gallery Woo
1F, 110, 74 Daebyeon-ro, Gijang-eup, Gijang-gun, 46079, Busan, Republic of Korea
+82 742 6596

WEB  INSTAGRAM