Alex Becerra's First Solo Exhibition in Asia: "Prelude to Understanding".. and More
Various Small Fires, Seoul
Alex Becerra's First Solo Exhibition in Asia: "Prelude to Understanding"
Various Small Fires (VSF) in Hannam-dong will present Prelude to Understanding, a solo exhibition by Alex Becerra (b.1989), from June 17 to July 15. This exhibition is the Los Angeles-based artist’s first solo exhibition in Asia and his second with VSF.
The artist explores the way we view contemporary life through a variety of works, including painting, drawing, and sculpture. Becerra approaches painting with the goal of evoking an embodied response from the viewer and uses high-quality oil paints to create noisy, rough painting with dense surfaces through color, gesture, and imagery. His works often feature montage elements, superimposing cacophony, chaos, and distractions of modern life across multiple moments in time.
The work in this exhibition, “The Worst of Classical Easel Painting Oil,” exemplifies the artist’s tension between fragmented simultaneity and clarity. In this work, a bearded, well-dressed figure stands at an easel, working on a small canvas. The outline of the gentleman in yellow paint is reminiscent of ‘European plein air painting’. The blades of grass behind him, around him, and within his outline extend to the right-side canvas, where a woman’s figure is painted in a tropical landscape.
The woman’s body is both nude and represented by tropical plants, an acknowledgment of the journeys that artists like Gauguin and Rousseau took to Europe in search of ‘pure’ inspiration for their landscapes and portraits. The clearly articulated figure of the painter and the abstractions surrounding it suggest the artist’s power to create his reality, leaving the viewer’s gaze as an exclusive domain.
GANA ART NINEONE
An Exhibition Showcasing the Various Artistic Worlds of Four Artists: "Narrative Alters"
GANA ART NINEONE will present Narrative Alters, a group exhibition by four artists, from June 22 to July 12. The four artists in this exhibition will present works that explore personal experiences and perspectives through their unique artistic language.
The exhibition will feature works by Jang Koal (b.1989), who uses intense primary colors to create strange and surreal images of girls that represent Korean women or project the artist’s inner thoughts, and Aaron Johnson (b.1975), who creates unpredictable imaginary beings through ‘Color-Field Painting’, one of the signature techniques of Abstract Expressionism.
The exhibition will also feature new and existing works by Super Future Kid (b.1981), a German-born artist who spent his childhood in East Germany and is inspired by digital culture, and Kadar Brock (b.1980), who paints on canvas, then scrapes and sands it with a razor blade, destroying and reconstructing the canvas to speak to the mythology that constitutes the artist.
Through this exhibition, we hope that visitors will have the opportunity to experience the diverse artistic worlds of the four artists, questioning and reflecting on the universal perceptions inherent in our lives and forming various narratives.
