Installation view of 《No one is here》 © Dohing Art

From July 14 to August 14, 2021, Dohing Art presents 《No one is here》, bringing together five young artists whose vibrant works across genres reflect the vision of emerging artists living in 2021.
 
The exhibition explores the entity of the “ghost,” shaped by the artists’ imagination.
 
Italian lyric poet Giacomo Leopardi (1798–1837) once stated, “It is the gaze that first gives birth to love,” suggesting that the eye conveys the forms of everything we behold into the heart.
 
Dante similarly wrote that visible things enter the eye not as substance but as intention—passing as if through transparent glass—meaning that it is not the object itself but its image that enters our sight.
 
Their assertions suggest that the image of an object is inscribed into our senses; the impression, fantasy, or ghost thus obtained is received into the imagination. Ultimately, imagination allows the impression to persist even in the absence of the original object. In medieval psychology, this “image on the wall of the heart,” as Leopardi metaphorically described it, plays the role of the “ghost.”


Installation view of 《No one is here》 © Dohing Art

Socrates explained that memories remaining in our senses and passions connected to sensation inscribe writing upon the soul. When written truthfully, true speech and opinion arise within us; when written falsely, they produce results contrary to truth. He further described the act of imprinting images upon the soul—through sight or other senses—as an internal reappearance of objects after understanding or interaction through narrative or opinion.
 
Plato argued that the artist who paints images within the soul originates from imagination itself, defining such images—or “icons”—as ghosts. His discussion of memory and imagination sought to demonstrate that without such “images within the soul,” desire and pleasure would not be possible, and that purely physical desire does not exist.
 
Aristotle described vision as a mechanism in which a passion inscribed in the air by color is transmitted through the air into the eye, then reflected like a mirror within the eye’s moist substance. The motion and passion generated by sensation are conveyed to imagination, which in turn produces ghosts independent of the presence of the perceived object. Such ghosts, residing within the soul, can appear even in the absence of concrete sensation—such as when we close our eyes—and may even be false, unverifiable by science or intellect.
 
Taken together, these perspectives suggest that art begins when images encountered through vision are revived by imagination and newly inscribed into our senses as “ghosts,” ultimately shaping our thought.
 
Lee Haegang, who previously worked primarily with spray techniques in graffiti and animation, began oil painting on canvas and became intrigued by the medium’s slower pace, material density, and viscous texture. He now combines spray and oil painting. The tension between these media positions him as a mediator at the boundary between street culture and contemporary art. His protagonists are villains from animation—figures typically overshadowed by heroes. By granting them stronger abilities and central roles, he transforms them into protagonists. Sometimes grotesque or strange, these figures appear dazzling and chaotic.
 
Soo-in Choi explores emotional relationships shaped by the artist’s interactions with others, focusing on concealed feelings and resulting confusion or conflict. Her work begins by visualizing a disguised subject—her psychological model—situated under an external gaze, surrounded by a harsh environment.
 
As noted in her artist statement: “There is a gaze directed toward an object from the external world. Psychological subjects may gently receive this gaze and harmonize with it, or collide in intense conflict, pushing one another away. Images symbolizing the external world often appear as towering natural forms like guardian statues protecting villages, or as monsters or ghosts. Although these images may have their own narratives, I create them spontaneously to emphasize their seemingly objective presence. Yet even these are not entirely trustworthy.”
 
She portrays subjects who wish to disguise themselves yet fail awkwardly as hairy creatures. Within the landscape, the subject becomes a scene imbued with place-specificity. The false subjects within that scene remain fluid, impulsive, and continuously transforming.
 
Jaeyeon Yoo works across painting, relief, installation, and video, engaging unrestricted imaginative subjects. Through imagination, she constructs entirely new worlds by exploring the relationships between image and object, image and image, and image as autonomous presence. Her blue-toned works blend reality and fantasy through collected narratives from personal experience, unfolding image-telling without hesitation and guiding viewers into a surreal realm.
 
The order and rules that once manifested the lives, identities, and relationships of subjects and others dissolve into surreal imagination. Past and present, ideal and reality, here and elsewhere become unconscious fantasies, filling the canvas with a multi-layered, narrative spectrum of images.
 
Namgoong Ho and Jang Seungkeun actively embrace and develop “subculture” through animation-based pop art. By analyzing and transforming familiar animated imagery, they create vibrant compositions. Jang Seungkeun, working from the theme of “cognitive dissonance,” combines two familiar yet contradictory images to portray contemporary popular culture. His newly presented 'Assemble' series examines the viral spread and self-exhausting performativity of the Ice Bucket Challenge on social media. Replicated images proliferate across the canvas, representing data multiplication and appearing to transcend virtual space into material presence.
 
All five artists focus on the unreal and persistently investigate the ghosts formed within their imagination. What are these fictional ghosts they confront? What truth do they seek to reveal through them? And through what formal strategies do they unfold these narratives?
 
Dohing Art invites viewers to encounter the “ghosts” inhabiting the artists’ works—entities possessing distinct identities—and to experience how imaginary worlds become memory, and how memory transmits itself throughout the body. The gallery encourages audiences to enjoy the playful counterattack of these ghosts.

References