Arario Gallery is pleased to present  a group exhibition by Dongi Lee (b. 1967, South Korea), Sun Xun (b.1980, China), and Koichi Enomoto (b.1977, Japan), who show the world of art works covering a wide range of genres from cartoon to arts. 

Three artists spent a teenager in 1980 and 90s when a color television was popularly spread. Sub-culture including game, animation and cartoon made them form inner self in a dream world. The title 'Graphic Novel' is derived from a world referring to intermediate format between cartoon and novel. Graphic novel was a new style emphasizing cultural character and artistry unlike super hero genre after the Cold War. It is a result developed from obsessive activities of animation mania based on sub-culture as well as a concept for cartoon to escape from childish preference. 

Dongi Lee made 'atomous,' a combined character of Mickey Mouse and Astro boy, to depict various situations implying social signs and context. The artist has created atomaus in a familiar way to the public through cartoon style, or emphasized a relationship of different facts as conflicting language of abstract painting like color and line with each other. Recently, Lee tries new painting work bringing images from TV drama, which will be on view with previous atomaus series. 

Unlike cynical realism or Chinese political pop art by the first and second generation of Chinese artists, Sun Xun creates an ordinary life of Chinese people under the structured system in multilateral searching ways. The artist shows animation made of images created by woodcut. By physical characteristics, woodcut has been used for propaganda during Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution Destruction, and now rough and segmented images from it are showed in Sun Xun's video and installation. 

Koichi Enomoto's main material, a young girl is described as a sexual factor in a background. He recently shows an artwork strongly inspired by American cartoon. The image of a systemic world he previously showed is disappeared, but now he creates a chaotic scene. Today he depicts is full of violence, cruelness and irrationality. He shows such world dominated by fear for human desire and existence. 

The exhibition aims to read differences of characteristics, perspectives, and purposes between the artists representing graphic novel in Korea, Japan, and China. Also, it will be a chance to explore effect of pop culture, especially cartoon, on art. 

*image (left)
© Dongi Lee
courtesy of the artist and Arario Gallery