Ga, Kook-Hyun and Jung, Chul

2022 Solo Exhibitions

Emotional Still Life, Oil on Canvas, 46 x 39 inches, 2022

Riverside Gallery presents solo exhibitions of Kook-hyun Ga and Jung, Chul, titled “Alchemy with Representation and Abstraction” and “Energy Tuning,” respectively. The exhibition will run from November 1st to 14th, 2022, with an opening reception on November 5th, Saturday, from 5 to 7 pm.

According to Sang-hyeon Byon, Professor of Aesthetics at the Han-nam University, Kook-hyun Ga is “the alchemist who shapes neatness of form through varied color.” By rigorously applying elaborate patterns of color to a “blank” form or space, Ga achieves visual depth and form abstract experiences and sensations that reach a meditative level. In this way, Ga appears to adopt a view that within nothing there is something at the infinitesimal scale, and something is a nothing within the infinitely large scale. The way Ga flattens form from three-dimensional perspective into flat shapes of symbolic and abstract roles is perhaps the main reason why Professor Byon argues that Ga’s works sit in an ambiguous state of abstraction and representation.

Dansaekhwa could very well be an influence in Ga’s development as an artist, as the renowned contemporary art movement and Ga the artist are both Korean, and the meditative filling of blank space with monochrome colors is a key technique of both Dansaekhwa artists and Ga. What is seemingly representational at first is in fact a snippet of a wider abstract space continuum, and what has the abstract qualities is in fact an object traditionally associated with representation.

Unlike other artists who place their main subject in an environment of three dimensional space or interior, Ga puts his vases in an abstract and infinitely continuing space that simultaneously centers and de-centers the subject.

About the artist:

Ga, Kookhyun graduated from Han-nam University’s Art Education department and attained his MFA from the Sejong University’s Painting department.

He had a total of 38 solo exhibitions in Seoul, Daejon, Paris, and the Metropolitan area (NY), including Gallery Korea, Gallery Christine, Hyundai Art Gallery.

He also participated in the Korea Art Fair, Seoul Art Show, and KIAF held at the COEX in Seoul in the past.

Additional Reading:

Review by Sanghyeon Byeon

Energy Tuning, acrylic on canvas, 64 x 51 inches

Jung, Chul is a painter who uses abstract marks to make landscapes about the land and people’s relationship to it. Jung strives for a poetic kind of quality to the ephemeral and abstract marks that occupy the paintings as spatial or temporal regions, which the artist intends to be purely abstraction but borderlines representation due to their suggestive shapes or appearance. The title of the exhibition, “Energy Tuning,” could suggest the kind of energy that the land brings to its people in Eastern tradition.

Further Reading:

Review by KyungHan Hong