DOOSAN Gallery Seoul is pleased to present YOO Seungho and Ham Jin’s Close-Up. This exhibition presents the paintings of YOO Seungho, who creates landscapes from tiny handwritten ink characters on paper, and the sculptures of Ham Jin, who integrates his surrounding environment in miniature using polymer clay.

Emerging from the midst of an indistinct lightness and darkness, the landscapes and human figures that YOO Seungho presents create a cryptic, enigmatic atmosphere that draws us to his paintings. As we approach the works and stand before them, micro-sized written characters forming mountains, rivers, clouds, and human figures appear before our eyes. At a certain point, the repeating and overlapping characters transform into non-textual images, creating a form of visual tension.

Ham Jin’s sculptures initially appear to be drawings of points and lines in the midst of space, but reveal forms that become increasingly concrete as one nears them. Using black polymer clay, the artist organically interconnects and expands lines and planar surfaces as if he were drawing them. These forms begin from very specific images of the surrounding environment that the artist has observed (like those of human figures and cities) and transform—as if cells were interlinked and then trickling down—into abstract images, reducing a new world into a tiny, palm-sized space.

Through the works of YOO Seungho and Ham Jin, who individually reveal their distinct styles by employing methods of expansion and repetition, and reduction and transformation, this exhibition presents viewers with a perceptive experience that differs depending on the distance from which one views an artwork, and brings viewers face-to-face with the hidden world that exists beneath an image’s surface.

*image (left)
© HAM Jin
courtesy of the artist and Doosan Gallery