Another Worlds: Part I

18 April - 14 May 2006 Cheonan
Overview

Period | 18 April – 14 May, 2006
Venue | Arario Gallery Cheonan
Works | 20 pieces including installation, painting, sculpture
Opening Reception | 6pm, 18 April, 2006
Participating Artists | Pablo ALONSO, Lionel ESTÈVE, Jeremy FAY, Os GÊMEOS, Alexander GUTSCHE, Paul HAMMER, Jitish KALLAT, Sven KRONER, Michael PAREKOWHAI, Zhang ENLI, Kevin ZUCKER

The word “another” means “one more”, “one of a different kind”. In this exhibition titled “Another Worlds” composed of two parts, Arario Gallery is pleased to introduce twenty-two young artists under forty whose works have been collected by the gallery. They are estimated to have possibilities to foreshadow the future of contemporary art, though not mainstream yet.


The artists in Part 1 work on the themes that we can share and think together like social issues, questions about what is contemporary art, criticisms about history, human alienation in ever-changing society and so on. The works of these artists from various backgrounds and countries will offer new experiences of the subjects and expressions of contemporary art of today, evoking sympathy of the viewers.

Press release

The word “another” means “one more”, “one of a different kind”. In this exhibition titled “Another Worlds” composed of two parts, Arario Gallery is pleased to introduce twenty-two young artists under forty whose works have been collected by the gallery. They are estimated to have possibilities to foreshadow the future of contemporary art, though not mainstream yet. Each eleven artists in each part who have different cultural backgrounds will show us the present which is in rapid growth and change by interpreting it in an individual way. With these young artists who are expected to play a leading role in the future art market and world, Arario hopes to indicate a new direction for contemporary art circles.

The artists in Part 1 work on the themes that we can share and think together like social issues, questions about what is contemporary art, criticisms about history, human alienation in ever-changing society and so on. The works of these artists from various backgrounds and countries will offer new experiences of the subjects and expressions of contemporary art of today, evoking sympathy of the viewers.

The participants in Part 2 represent not only the realities of modern society but also the changing viewpoints of its members who are increasingly making discrete culture. Though influenced by the plethora of visual information, media and cultures, the artists transform the images in their own original way, investigating the inner world of man. It is through their imagination that they reflect reality, which makes their works speak some private and intimate languages, as well as imbue them with a sort of ambiguity. By telling the inner world that is hard to express in the original visual language, they manifest the infinite possibility of contemporary art to maximize creativity.

This exhibition is prepared to introduce to the Korean viewers the works of the young artists who are likely to be on the rise soon in the recent two-years’ collection of the gallery which has hosted large-scale shows both home and abroad. The gallery which has a plan to open a new museum “Another Museum” in the coming year of 2010 will continue to make efforts to collect the works of contemporary art of young and new artists to be possessed by the new museum.

Part 1.
Pablo ALONSO
Pablo ALONSO, born in Spain, works and lives in Germany and has had many successful exhibitions in Madrid and Berlin. He works on the problem of the interrelationship between artist and viewer in the real world and the present role of painting. His acrylic paintings depicting unreal objects are both real and surreal, through they look like a montage of newspaper photographs and documentary pictures for their gray colors. However, their violent subjects and grotesque images are spiced with wit and fun, which lights the serious atmosphere.

Lionel ESTÈVE
Lionel ESTÈVE, born in Lyon in 1967, graduated L’Ecole Des Beaux Arts and started his artistic career in Brussels in 1989. He is one of busiest artists, having had many solo and group exhibitions in Brussels, Antwerp, Paris, Amsterdam, Lisbon and New York. His works are characterized by using common objects like guitar string, pebbles, stickers, balloons and so on. The Balloon Series presented in this show also employs light, practical, and economical materials like hollow balloon-shapes and nets, in which he explores the relationship between the world and artist through the symbolism of a net.

Jeremy FAY
Jeremy FAY, an English artist who lives and works in New Castle, has had exhibitions in Germany, Italy, Britain, and Swiss. His large-scale paintings are figurative and full of painterly gestures, interpreting the relationships with and images of his family and friends in an insightful and funny way. With these portraits, he represents the commonplace, daily, but unique life and culture of the English people.

Os GÊMEOS
Os GÊMEOS means “the twins” in Portuguese, under which name the identical twin brothers Otavio and Gustavo Pandolfo presented their works. Their graffiti and installation works in the streets of Sao Paulo have brought sudden international fame to these relatively young artists who were born in 1974. The yellow-skinned figure appearing in their works represents the lower middle class of Sao Paulo which is influenced by a wooden effigy in the tradition folk art of Brazil. They paint this figure in the streets and buildings of Sao Paulo to make it melted together with the city’ identity. Recently they drew attention by creating an installation of 2m height as a part of the Daichi Project in the Amory Show, New York. Under the sponsor of NIKE, they are now working on a big scale project.

Alexander GUTSCHE
Alexander GUTSCHE was born in Potsdam, Germany, in 1970 and works in Leipzig. In his realistic paintings, figures and animal motifs have enigmatic meanings and the dot-patterned background is the homage to George Seurat, the father of Pointillism. The three works in this show, Fruhstuck im Freien(2004), Ich reiB mir hier für Euch den Arsch auf (2004), Einszweidrei (2005) belong to the ABC of Defeats. With an implication that meeting with defeats and hardships is not a far cry from victory, these works shows object-centrism and denial of seriousness prevailing in society in humorous images.

Paul HAMMER
Paul HAMMER was born and works in Leipzig, Germany in 1975. He offers a unique approach to painting, that is, uses flat painting in a three-dimensional way. Shwarze Wand(2005), a canvas painting work, is hung on the wall with other objects such as embroidered clothes, gloves, and necklace. The objects suspended like icon paintings seem to be the homage to everyday things rather than a derision of the sublime beauty of contemporary art.

Jitish KALLAT
Jitish KALLAT lives and works in Mumbai, India. The artists focus on images of children, making comments on the inhumane working conditions, the corrupt and cruel city, which employ children. He also introduces experimental methods to tell the stories happening around him everyday. The vivid colors and photographs which remind us of the graphic images of advertisements and collage works with rough surfaces which use paints and others resemble the walls of Mumbai covered with graffiti.

Sven KRONER
Sven KRONER was born in 1973 and studied in the Düsseldorf Academy. He is one of the emerging Young German Artists(YGA). The large-scale works of natural landscape like huge mountains look for the comfort for the modern man who becomes increasingly and incurably exhausted in this complicated society, as well as reflecting upon the relationship between man and nature. Theses paintings are full of intensive energy and pictorial sentiments with good expressive skills.

Michael PAREKOWHAI
Michael PAREKOWHAI is one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most famous contemporary artists. His works which were shown in Gwangju Biennale in Korea and Art & Industry Urban Arts Biennale in New Zealand are widely known as funny and interesting kitsch sculptures. These elaborate and finely-wrought works well represent not only the ideas of cultural space and formation but also the coexistence and collision of the two cultures, that is, Maori and European traditions in New Zealand. The two figures of policemen, which are presented in this show, are a part of the series of policemen who have very similar appearances as if clones. PAREKOWHAI searches their minute differences found only in the name tags attached the right corner of the works.

Zhang ENLI
Zhang ENLI raises the issue of isolation and loneliness of individuals in China growing rapidly, mainly presenting the images of the Chinese people who seat around a round table and have a meal or two lovers who are embracing each other and kissing. Those who fill the picture fully seem to be passionate and intimate but nevertheless are separated.

Kevin ZUCKER
Kevin ZUCKER is a young emerging artist who was born in 1976 and graduated from Rhode Island School of Design and Columbia University, New York. He had four solo exhibitions in New York and Germany, investigating the way of constituting a sense of three-dimension on the plane. He attempts to make new pictorial meanings by appropriating the visual language of 3-d modeling programs which is used for creating a sense of reality in the virtual space in the process of transforming landscapes or structures to simple shapes.

Installation Views
Works