Gallery Baton is pleased to introduce Korean artist Bae YoonHwan (b.1983) at IGA before his second solo exhibition will take place at the gallery in Seoul at the end of June.
This online exhibition features recent paintings by Bae Yoon Hwan. His pictorial storytelling stems from political incidents, stories, fables and his personal experiences. By selectively employing images from a constant outpouring of media productions or some art-historical pictures considered as classics, he juxtaposes and contrasts abundant tales contained in them in order to transform them into ceaseless narratives visualized in a variety of scales of forms. His practice consists of abrupt utterances of fragmental and anecdotal stories instead of following a coherent storyline: it is a manifestation of his original figurative ‘Automatism.’
Bae Yoon Hwan, The Breathing Island, installation view, Gallery Baton, Seoul, 2017-2018.
“Each canvas is an island absorbing thoughts and also a boat carrying them and wandering aimlessly. While the island is breathing, creatures are constantly emerging.”
Bae YoonHwan maintained a depicting style of arraying his eccentric reveries in the first solo exhibition at Baton in 2017, whereas he excludes most of apprehension and concern that tightly bind him in the process of creation.
While he empties piled layers of collective emotions, sentiments from the present and the past intersect. He attaches and segregates all aspects recklessly intruding upon inside of his head. Thus, he has achieved delivering dynamic energy into a complicated structure of narrative by presenting a great number of paintings possessing a sense of freedom to such an extent that the artist himself can not predict the outcome.
Bae Yoon Hwan, The Flexible Boundaries, installation view, Gallery Baton, Seoul, 11 Jan-11 Feb 2022.
The signatures of previous works by Bae were ingeniously rearranging apocryphal stories remaining in one’s subconscious mind and vividly describing them with rough brush strokes whereas he has brought personified animals in his new work to create a witty yet eccentric ambience and subtly unveil a substantial context behind the surface.
Sunbathing on the Ice, 2021 depicting a raucous moment of a group of bears on a blue boat creates an impending tension caused by the composition dividing the upper and lower parts and movements of the subjects embodied in dynamic strokes.
Installation view at Gallery Baton booth at Art Brussles, 2022
His new works will be unveiled at What? In my back yard?!, the second solo exhibition at Gallery Baton.
Bae Yoon Hwan
What? In my back yard?!
29 June-30 July 2022
Gallery Baton, Seoul
116 Dokseodang-ro, Yongsan-gu, Seoul, Korea 04420