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'artclub1563' is pleased to present its 8th exhibition, ‹The Art on Your Wall›, from May 24th to June 23rd 2012. The exhibition takes its inspiration from the Arts and Crafts Movement, which was led by an artist William Morris and a social critic John Ruskin in the late 19th century England to reinvigorate the craftsmanship of artists. Initially started as a reaction to the uniform and impoverished state of the mass-produced industrial products, it stood for traditional ‘craftsmanship’ and sought to restore the beautiful objects that would enhance lives of ordinary people. Spreading across Europe and North America, it also allowed a shift of paradigm in decorative arts. With wallpaper artworks specially commissioned to 6 contemporary artists, the current exhibition explores the modern reinterpretation of the Arts & Crafts movement.

Taking nature and myth as her subject matter, Eemyun Kang (b.1981) has been working on large canvas pieces that embrace the ontological question of ‘becoming’ – the point at which an idea, creative process or painting crystallizes and takes on a new form. The current exhibition presents a wallpaper version of her ‘scroll painting’ piece (2007), which is interconnected with her painting series, «Fungal Land», where the artist’s interest in the cycle of creation and destruction is resonated. Kang’s artwork for the current exhibition is created in a form of mesostic poetry, providing a more concrete narrative to a painting that is inherently composed of visual images. At the same time, the work facilitates viewers to investigate the relationship between form and function, giving them a new experience on the text in the work. The accompanied painting, «Back of the Horse» (2007), is based on 1909 horse phobia case study of “Little Hans” and shows the artist’s own reconstructed sense of dislocation.

Hye Rim Lee (b.1963) creates a contemporary myth by reflecting mixture of concepts including reality and fantasy, tradition and new technology, and the West and East in her work «TOKI/Cyborg project»(2003~). A 3D animation, «The Strawberry Gardens» recreates a fantasy world that evokes nostalgia for childhood. In this work, she deals with various issues such as individual identity, differences of aesthetic criterion among cultures, and our obsession to beauty through a character called TOKI existing in a virtual reality.

Kiil Lee (b.1967)’s works resurface the history of Korean bands from the 1960’s to 80’s. Although they were the pioneers of Korean pop culture, there has been no proper documentation, and they have disappeared from the public memory. Lee interviews members of the bands that were active during the period and collects documents related to them. Sometimes he even organizes concerts that reenact the days back then. Through such activities, Lee attempts to explain what the Western music meant to Koreans in the period when it flowed in via radio broadcasting of the US Army while the general musical sensitivity was characterized by Japanese influenced songs and the Eastern genres such as Korean folk music, Pansori, and Taryeong. Moreover, he attempts to show its impact on us now, questioning the relationship within the domain of pop culture, both from the past and present. His wallpaper artwork, «Label», enumerates the labels of numerous vinyl records, ranging from the albums of the legendary Korean bands such as Sanulim, Yankees to a movie soundtrack of «Heavenly Homecoming to Stars», a popular movie in the 70’s. The label of each vinyl records, collected in the stream of times from 60’s to 80’s, has its own dramatic content and trend from historical setting. However, they act as a constitution of identical symbols in one single pattern.

Oil paintings with strong contrasting colours, which are often based on ordinary images such as souvenir postcards and personal snapshot images of her domestic surrounding environment, have been at the center of Swiss artist Caro Niederer (b. 1963)’s works. Niederer has been investigating her interest in the interpretive transformation presented in various media, by replicating the images in her paintings through silk-screen printing or reproducing them with materials representing a household, such as carpets and tapestries. Her wallpaper artwork for the current exhibition, «Girl in the Woods», is created under the same context. Presenting a girl drifting through a forest, the work gives a subtle contrast to her paintings in the exhibition, «Picknick» and «Beach», which depict family members enjoying and outing in the woods and at the beach. At the same time, one can see a delicate connection among the works, built upon the artist’s way of seeing the objects in a certain distance.

Ekaterina Shapiro-Obermair (b.1980) is a visual artist born in Moscow and currently based in Vienna. Ekaterina works with formal visual fragments of modernism, but she creates her own system of reference, deconstructing the formalistic claim for the integrity of these forms and their absolute fundamental quality. Such aspect is clearly presented in her wallpaper artwork, «Talk to the Driver, so that he does not Fall Asleep» and «Flower_2». Her geometrical patterns seem to oscillate between Concrete art and Op art within an art-historical reference system. Her moderate and elaborate arrangement of modules, however, cannot be constrained to either of the two categories.

Richard Woods (b.1966) has been transforming numerous buildings and architectural environment with panels that present patterns influenced by William Morris, who profoundly influenced the decorative art in the late 19th century England, using the technique of traditional wooden printing methodology. Through his work of modern interpretation of patterns used in the past, he encompasses the seeming oppositions between the internal and external, real and fake, and urban and rural. Presenting his lighting piece «Wooden Sculpture with Light», which was produced by the method mentioned above, along with the wall paper artwork «Smallwood» series, the current exhibition reflects the essence of his style in which the boundary between modern art and interior design is challenged and blurred.


Following the exhibition, artworks produced for ‹The Art on Your Wall› will be donated to and installed at Kangnam Orphanage in Gaepo-dong.

Curated by SUUM project
http://artclub1563.com