K.O.N.G Gallery, which represents artist Kwak Intan (b. 1986), is exhibiting Palette, the artist’s first solo exhibition at the gallery through November 5, 2022. Combining sculpture and painting, Kwak pursues a new artistic style and creates sculptures with novel forms, structures, and textures.

Kwak combines the images of the artworks by great masters such as Kim Whanki, Lee Ufan, Willem de Kooning, Auguste Rodin, and Alberto Giacometti to create abstract and surrealistic sculptures. After attaching cement and resin to a framework, Kwak applies different colors to the sculpture as if it were a palette. The color scheme of a sculpture may be reminiscent of Kim Whanki’s blue-hued paintings or Willem de Kooning’s intensely colored works, while its form somehow recalls Giacometti.

The exhibition also includes Kwak’s new group of relief works. In each piece, a tiger head that symbolizes the artist who was born in the year of the tiger, the hands of sculptors, the shape of dinosaur toys that the artist favored as a child, and emojis are scattered across the relief works. The fragments of everyday life in various colors and shapes that make up the artist are spread and pasted on the surface of the artwork like thick paint on a palette.

Kwak Intan’s works received a great deal of attention from the Korean art world after participating in the exhibition Sculptural Impulse at the SeMA Buk Seoul Museum of Art, which highlighted young contemporary sculptors. He had solo exhibitions at Ohzemidong Gallery (2016, Seoul) and Studio 148 (2019, Seoul). In 2018, he had a two-person exhibition with media artist Ifie Sin at 2/W. Before being a part of SeMA’s Sculptural Impulse in 2022, he participated in the group exhibition at the Osan Museum of Art this year.

"Palette”    
2022.10.05 - 2022.11.05
Tue-Sat 10:30 am – 5:30 pm
K.O.N.G Gallery
38, Samcheong-ro 7gil, Jongno-gu, Seoul, Korea