Art OnO 2024

19–21 April, 2024

SETEC Exhibition Hall 1, 2, 3, 3104 Nambusunhwan-ro, Gangnam-gu, Seoul 06287

Booth 103

Seoul—Pearl Lam is delighted to announce its inaugural participation in ART OnO. On view is a selection of artworks by a variety of artists from China, Nigeria, Slovakia, the UK, and USA, showcasing the depth of the gallery’s aesthetics. Exhibiting artists include Alimi Adewale (b. 1974, Nigeria), Mr Doodle (b. 1994, UK), Channing Hansen (b. 1972, USA), Michal Korman (b. 1987, Slovakia), Antony Micallef (b. 1975, UK), Zanele Muholi (b. 1972, South Africa), Anya Paintsil (b. 1993, UK), Su Xiaobai (b. 1949, China), Yan Lei (b. 1965, China), Zhu Jinshi (b. 1954, China), and Zhu Peihong (b. 1987, China).

Alimi Adewale, a Nigerian artist, embarks on a creative journey that revolves around unravelling the profound beauty and cultural tapestry that defines the African experience. On view is his latest series titled Figurative Fusion, which is an exploration of the intersection between traditional realism and contemporary abstraction in the realm of figurative painting. It is a testament to the artist’s ability to harmonise diverse artistic elements, offering a fresh perspective on the expressive potential of the human figure in contemporary art. 

Mr Doodle began consuming the Earth’s surface with doodles when he was born in 1994. He started out covering his parents’ furniture with doodles and eventually his whole bedroom until he realized his home wasn’t a big enough canvas. He has said, “I want my work to consume as much of the planet as it can.” Unlike the work of Keith Haring, whom he is often compared to, Mr Doodle’s works are not political. Instead, he aims to create a happy visual language in which all audiences can immerse themselves. One of the artist’s larger works on display is Sandy Ghost, which explores his idea of ‘Abstract Doodlism’ with loose shapes not based on any recognizable objects. 

Channing Hansen is a polymath, simultaneously pursuing interests in craft, science, and technology in his work. His large hand-knitted textiles are mounted on wooden stretchers and feature vibrant, abstract forms that undulate across their web-like surfaces. An extremely labour-intensive process, the artist skirts, washes, dyes, blends, and spins the wool himself. Hansen was born in 1972 in Los Angeles, California, USA, where he continues to live and work.

For a few years now, Michal Korman has dedicated his focus and found inspiration in the world of plants. The beauty of flowers, gardens, and the surrounding nature fills him with happiness, which he translates onto the canvas using flat solid oil paint chunks. These chunks serve as both ornaments and motifs, enhancing and disrupting their presence within the composition. What matters most to him is capturing the excitement in the viewer’s eye. The artist currently lives and works in Paris.

Described as a modern expressionist, Antony Micallef roots his work in social commentary and self-examination. Known for his visually charged figure paintings, he uses oil paint in a groundbreaking way and can sculpt and form the paint to reconfigure the parameters of what an oil painting can be. Combined with his impasto and layering techniques, Constructing Auras No. 12 is pushed to its extreme and blurs our reading of painting and sculpture.

Zanele Muholi is a visual activist and photographer. Presented as a photographic archive is a collection of self-portraits from the Somnyama Ngonyama (Hail the Dark Lioness) series that the artist has been working on since 2012. These autobiographic and highly personal portraits express, in Muholi’s own words, “the journey, self-image, and possibilities of a black person in today’s global society.” A selection of paintings and beadwork related to the photographs will also be on view to provide a broader perspective for understanding the artist’s multifaceted art practice.

Anya Paintsil is a London-based textile artist of Welsh and Ghanaian descent. Combining traditional hand rug-making techniques with Afro hairstyling methods, Paintsil’s practice is largely autobiographical, taking inspiration from her childhood, family stories, and Welsh and Ghanaian mythologies, while exploring identity and gendered labour and seeking to promote artistic practices historically devalued due to their associations with femininity and other marginalised groups.

Su Xiaobai has developed a sensuous yet rigorous art that defies classification, and yet its own chosen medium, lacquer, is steeped in Chinese history. Su’s works are both hedonistic and mystical, defiantly sculptural while exquisitely painted. Ranging from shell-like finishes to sensuous, curved profiles and abraded textures, they exist entirely on their own terms, possessing their history, character, and independent existence. Rather than depict other objects, his art engages with the idea of being itself. At its centre, Su’s work uses the visual language and context of art to embody issues that are both philosophical and, at an everyday human level, universal.

Yan Lei is a prominent Chinese conceptual artist who emerged as part of the first generation of artists in China working in various mediums such as painting, photography, video, performance, and installation. His artistic practice revolves around exploring the ever-changing dynamics of social, political, and economic factors in the context of globalisation. He delves into the relationships between the local and global, the centre and peripheries, and the powerful and the disempowered. Yan has gained international recognition through his participation in prestigious exhibitions, including Documenta (Kassel, Germany, 2007 and 2012), the Venice Biennale, the Gwangju Biennale, the Istanbul Biennale, and the Shanghai Biennale. In his pursuit of an optimistic tone in his work, Yan has employed circular shapes to create a series called Colour Wheel. By employing chromatographic separation, he has produced 360 different colours. Depending on the logic or sequences used with the colour wheel, an infinite number of combinations can be generated, adding a sense of both mystique and automation to the production process of Yan’s paintings. 

Zhu Jinshi, an influential figure in the realm of Chinese abstract and installation art, crafted The Era of Drifting Away during the autumn and winter seasons of 2022. This masterpiece stands as a unique diptych artwork, measuring 2 metres by 4 metres in size. The painting came into being amidst the tumultuous outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in China—a period characterised by fear, uncertainty, and an indeterminate future. Nonetheless, it is precisely during such challenging times that people yearn for confidence and bravery. Hence, despite the somewhat melancholic name of the artwork, its imagery evokes a refreshing spring breeze, replete with vibrant colours, audacious yet delicate brushstrokes, and a harmonious interplay of emptiness and solidity. The piece encapsulates the ebb and flow of life’s dramatic fluctuations, embracing both peaks and valleys.

Zhu Peihong was born in Shanghai in 1987. His work is inspired by his visual memory of the city of Shanghai. Growing focuses on dots, lines, and colour patches with the strokes overlapping and covering each other. The paint slowly drips and spreads, solidifies and stops, repeatedly until these fragmented traces, reaching an internal order, organically connect and construct the conscious cyberspace perceived by the artist’s mind like a mental landscape of a utopia in between reality and virtuality.