Artsonje Center presents Night Studio, a solo exhibition by Jewyo Rhii. The exhibition title, Night Studio, refers to many sleepless nights that the artist spent in her studio in Itaewon amid the fear and restlessness she experienced while living in the strange new neighborhood. The presented body of work is derived from four Open Studios that took place from August 2010 to August 2011, when it already had been two years since Rhii arrived in Itaewon in 2009 after traveling around the world for more than a decade. The exhibition reflects on the everyday experiences that occur in the studio, a space for both living and working. It also reveals the ways in which the artist’s private space comes into contact with the public realm – how the boundaries of the private and the public are challenged and how they are transformed or blurred as a result.

Night Studio is composed of more than twenty works, including a number of new ones. They reveal how Rhii understands her surroundings and adjusts to the given conditions to her liking. The exhibition also features works that were rearranged specifically in response to the museum space. Originally presented at the Open Studios in Itaewon, the Night Studio series (2009-2011) is reconstructed as the central focus of this exhibition. having gone through several stages of development, the installations enter into dialogue with each exhibition space as they travelled through the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, the MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt, and Artsonje Center in Seoul. In the exhibition where the artist’s private space and the public art institution come together, the artist unfolds her experiences from different spaces and times. In addition, her works that constantly cross the boundary between art and everyday life reveal the relationship between the artist and the world. It is our hope that Rhii’s Night Studio will provide an opportunity for us to reflect on our living surroundings with a new perspective just as much her subtle sensibilities and insights suggest the possibility of new relationship between art and everyday conditions.

The exhibition Night Studio at Artsonje Center in Seoul is a traveling exhibition in collaboration with the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, Netherlands and the MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt, Germany. It was presented with a different title Walls to Talk to in the two overseas museums earlier this year. An accompanying catalogue will also be published, offering multiple perspectives on Rhii’s works with essays written by Sunjung Kim (director of SAMUSO), Nick Aikens (curator of Van Abbemuseum), Charles Esche (director of Van Abbemuseum), and Henk Visch (artist).

*image (left)
Jewyo Rhii, Moving Floor, 2013,
mixed media, dimensions variable 
© Jewyo Rhii

Courtesy of Artsonje Center