Jewyo Rhii "Airport Romance"
April 11 – May 17, 2008
April 11 – May 17, 2008
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» deutsche version
After showing the work of Jewyo Rhiii, an artist born and working in Seoul, within the framework of a series of exhibitions curated by Miya Yoshida last year, I am happy to present you the European premiere of „Airport Romance“, another major work of this artist.
“Jewyo Rhii is a very good example for those rare contemporary artists who successfully and seemingly without much effort integrate subjective realities into an artistic vision of the world around them – using every detail within their reach to weave a poetic web of interrelated feelings and facts. Through her incredibly intense and painstakingly close observation, Rhii can create affectionate, warmly humorous images that communicate both physically and mentally with her environment. Yet underneath such a surface, there is also a surprisingly strong sense of frustration, and even despair.
» deutsche version
After showing the work of Jewyo Rhiii, an artist born and working in Seoul, within the framework of a series of exhibitions curated by Miya Yoshida last year, I am happy to present you the European premiere of „Airport Romance“, another major work of this artist.
“Jewyo Rhii is a very good example for those rare contemporary artists who successfully and seemingly without much effort integrate subjective realities into an artistic vision of the world around them – using every detail within their reach to weave a poetic web of interrelated feelings and facts. Through her incredibly intense and painstakingly close observation, Rhii can create affectionate, warmly humorous images that communicate both physically and mentally with her environment. Yet underneath such a surface, there is also a surprisingly strong sense of frustration, and even despair.
This important impulse of a negative romantic attitude in Rhii’s works stems from a lover’s discourse, which is distinctively reflected in her latest series of works that are based on elements of love stories. A first love story has been visible in the gallery before: the video installation “Lie on Han River” (2005) that visually and acoustically (it contains a sound contribution by the artist David Michael DiGregorio) draws upon a semi-fictitious narrative of despair and loss, held together by emotionally charged, improvised and almost haphazard drawings with a pop-cultural tonality. The despair in this story of a lost love – lovers are invited to come back to the banks of the Han River, unwelcoming site of their romantic meetings and lured into a series of ingenuous contraptions and inventions intended to overcome or screen out the harsh conditions that put an early end to the love story – reaches beyond the personal while clearly eschewing banal universalism of a ‘such is the never simple and diverse nature of love’ kind.