Art Space Hohwa presents 《Deep Layer》, a group exhibition featuring
works by Gunwoo Shin, Donghyuk Lee, Jiwon Choi, and Kostas
Papakostas, united by their shared use of the color blue in painting and
sculpture. The exhibition title, Deep Layer, refers to the deep-sea layers of
the ocean—a realm where blue and black intermingle in Earth’s final frontier.
Enveloped in an endless curtain of deep blue, the ocean’s depths are free from
the fixed territorial boundaries that define life on land. There, the subject
slips fluidly between borders, encountering the Other through chance, and in
doing so, expands both self and world.
《Deep Layer》 introduces the layered visual
and narrative dimensions of blue—its mystery, multiplicity, and
intersectionality, akin to the uncharted deep sea. Each participating artist
takes curiosity toward the unseen as a foundational theme, visualizing it
through their own aesthetic language.
Gunwoo Shin creates
figures infused with religious motifs and sculptures that appear eroded or
hollowed out.
By delicately spraying ultramarine fibers onto their surfaces, he
evokes the coexistence of presence and absence. Donghyuk Lee, meanwhile,
delves into doubt and belief, conjuring desolate scenes where Christian symbols
are fused with abandoned spaces and objects. Both artists interrogate
long-established human narratives and reframe them through the visual languages
of sculpture and painting.
The
other two artists in the show approach different invisible realms of life
through contrasting painterly gestures. Jiwon Choi gathers porcelain
dolls, insect remains once brimming with life, and artificial organisms,
assembling them into refined surreal figurative paintings rendered in cool blue
tones. Kostas Papakostas conveys the raw energy of existence with
forceful, dark-blue strokes, exploding across the canvas. Together, they draw
out the dual nature of life—its vitality and transience—with poignant
sensitivity.
These
artists drift through the unknown realms of erosion, belief, death, and
force—concepts that, while invisible, undeniably exist. Their blue journeys do
not follow a linear or vertical trajectory from periphery to center. Rather,
they move horizontally—sideways, or in aimless wanderings. French philosophers Deleuze
and Guattari, in A Thousand Plateaus, champion this nomadic mode of
existence and cite the sea as its prime metaphor. In the ocean, where no
boundaries are defined, one can go in any direction. Likewise, the works in 《Deep Layer》 not only share a deep blue
palette, but also resonate with the sea’s essence—drifting within the vast
theme of "presence in absence."
The
exhibition invites viewers to trace the free, blue trajectories of these four
voyagers—at times parallel, at times overlapping—as they sail toward new
imaginative terrain.
