Arario Gallery Seoul will present Forbidden Love, a solo exhibition by Shih Yung Chun (b. 1978, Taiwan), from 16 October to 6 December 2025. This exhibition marks the artist’s first solo presentation in Korea and brings together a wide range of new works across the gallery’s three floors.
The exhibition features a sculptural series evoking a puppet theater stage, a group of paintings depicting scenes from these staged settings, and a film that reassembles the entire narrative in a cinematic format. Growing up in a village near a military base during Taiwan’s period of rapid economic growth, Shih Yung Chun developed a sense of empathy for things that were quickly discarded and replaced amid a fast changing social landscape. His practice often begins with images sourced from product packaging, newspapers, and magazines of the 1980s, the decade of his childhood.
In this context, toys, which have become a central motif in his recent works, function both as triggers for the artist’s memories and as objects that quietly reveal the traces of the time and place from which they originate. Through the intricate and layered relationships these toys form with one another, they expand the narrative framework of his work in multiple directions.
