Solo Exhibitions (Brief)

Noh’s recent solo exhibitions include 《Holy》 (ARARIO Gallery Seoul, Seoul, 2024), 《Ghost Brush》 (Yukikomizutani, Tokyo, 2024), 《The Great Chapbook》 (ARARIO Gallery Shanghai, Shanghai, China, 2023), 《The Great Chapbook II》 (ARARIO MUSEUM in SPACE, Seoul, 2018), and 《The Great Chapbook》 (West Warehouse, Seoul, 2016).

Group Exhibitions (Brief)

Noh has also participated in numerous group exhibitions, including 《Kitsch & Pop》 (Korean Cultural Center, Shanghai, China; Korean Cultural Center, Hong Kong, 2025), 《Godzilla 70th Anniversary: Godzilla the Art Exhibition》 (Mori Arts Center Gallery, Tokyo, 2025), 《The 24th SONGEUN Art Award Exhibition》 (SONGEUN, Seoul, 2024), 《Art and Artificial Intelligence》 (Ulsan Art Museum, Ulsan, 2024), and 《Hysteria: Contemporary Realism Painting》 (Ilmin Museum of Art, Seoul, 2023).

Awards (Selected)

Noh gained attention for being selected in MMCA’s 《Young Korean Artists 2014》 (2014).

Residencies (Selected)

Noh was the artist-in-residence at the SeMA Nanji Residency (Seoul, Korea) in 2015, and also participated in an artist residency exchange program between Hungary and Korea (Budapest, Hungary) in 2016.

Collections (Selected)

Noh’s works are collected by institutions such as the MMCA Government Art Bank, Koo House Museum, ARARIO MUSEUM, and more.

Originality & Identity

Noh Sangho’s practice begins with an exploration of the contemporary visual environment shaped by the internet and social media. He collects digital images that are generated and disappear by the second, translating them by hand to make the very “circulation of images” the subject of his inquiry. His early work, There’s a Town Where All the People Have Had to Keep Their Eyes Closed(2016), combines online narratives with a fairy-tale imagination, serving as a metaphor for human perception and belief directed toward the unseen world. During this period, what mattered most to the artist was “story,” and images functioned as a vehicle to deliver that narrative.

Through the ongoing series ‘Daily Fiction’(2011–), Noh created a fictional space where everyday experiences, online images, and personal memories intersect. The act of producing “one drawing a day” mirrors the repetitive cycle of creation and consumption in online content, while positioning the artist himself as a participant within that system.

The ‘The Great Chapbook’ series, initiated in 2016, expanded this structure of image circulation. Borrowing the concept of the “chapbook”—a thin, cheaply produced publication for light consumption—the artist layered thousands of drawings to construct a vast narrative field. Here, “story” gradually recedes, while the very mode of existence of “images” becomes the central theme.

Since the 2020s, he has translated immaterial images such as 3D models, game graphics, and AI-generated visuals into the language of painting, approaching the “substance of digital illusion.” In his recent solo exhibition 《Holy》(ARARIO Gallery, 2024), the combination of AI-generated strange figures and religious iconography elevated the relationship between human creativity and technological simulacra to a mythological dimension.

Style & Contents

Noh Sangho’s work begins with “carbon paper drawings.” He prints digital images and traces them using carbon paper, restoring a sense of material trace. This hand-crafted replication serves as both a counteractive gesture against the infinite reproducibility of digital images and an honest exposure of their inherent nature.

The watercolor drawings in the ‘Daily Fiction’ series, rendered with flexible and light brushwork, visualize the volatility of images circulating through online feeds. In contrast, in his solo exhibition 《The Great Chapbook II》(2018, ARARIO MUSEUM in Space), he used water-soluble oils to achieve sharper imagery, hanging hundreds of drawings on clothing racks throughout the gallery. This installation method metaphorically mirrors the structure of contemporary visual culture, where mass-produced images are consumed like merchandise in a retail display.

Since 2021, the artist has actively incorporated 3D graphics and video-making techniques. By combining junk 3D models or objects extracted from games and converting them back into 2D paintings, he completes a cyclical structure connecting three dimensions—depth, surface, and the virtual. The Great Chapbook 3(2021) exemplifies this approach, blurring the boundaries between digital capture and painterly interpretation.

In The Great Chapbook 4 – Holy(2023), he introduced the use of an airbrush to conceal traces of the hand while layering plaster and pigments to emphasize materiality. His method of redrawing AI-generated motifs by hand creates a coexistence between digital and analog textures. Recently, his practice has expanded into 3D-printed sculptures, videos, and installations, visually manifesting the process by which virtual images infiltrate physical space.

Topography & Continuity

Noh Sangho is regarded as one of the artists who interpret the visual culture of the digital age most painterly. He observes the ecology of contemporary images—their production, consumption, replication, and re-editing—and translates them into the slower medium of painting. In doing so, his practice extends beyond mere appropriation of digital imagery to an ontological study of the image itself.

His work is situated within the context of Korea’s “post-internet generation,” yet it transcends simple reflection of online culture. Instead, he explores, in visual terms, the intersections where digital technology and human perception collide and coexist. In his solo exhibition 《Ghost Brush》(Yukikomizutani, 2024) in Japan, he presented a hybrid aesthetic combining AI, 3D, and painting, offering a new vision of “machine-made sanctity.”
He has also expanded his practice within the global discourse on the relationship between technology, humanity, and imagery, participating in exhibitions such as 《Art and Artificial Intelligence》(Ulsan Art Museum, 2024) and 《Beyond the Circular Ruins》(ARARIO Gallery Shanghai, 2025).

His works are held in the collections of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, ARARIO Museum, and Koo House Museum, receiving recognition from both institutional and market spheres.

Looking ahead, Noh Sangho’s practice is likely to become increasingly sophisticated at the intersection of traditional painting, artificial intelligence, and 3D visual language. Continuing to explore the “politics of images,” he will keep developing a new painterly language that navigates between reality and the virtual—an aesthetic attuned to the sensibilities of the contemporary age.