Installation view of
《Layered》 ©ARARIO
MUSEUMARARIO MUSEUM presents AN Gyungsu’s solo
exhibition 《Layered》, on view
through January 18, 2026, at ARARIO MUSEUM in SPACE.
AN Gyungsu paints scenes that touch upon
ruins. Here, ruins encompass not only places left crumbling and abandoned, but
the broader symptomatic landscapes that drift through anonymous, unnamed time. He
gathers sensations that linger outside—neither becoming events nor ordinary
daily life—and regenerates them as landscape images.
Installation view
of 《Layered》 ©ARARIO
MUSEUMThis exhibition, 《Layered》, presents scenes that draw closer to ruined landscapes. A black
pool within a bankrupt construction site that remained for years in Hamdeok,
Jeju; a Malaysian beach swept by tsunamis during the 2004 South Asian
earthquake; an ordinary swimming pool in Dachau, Germany, in 1944, during the
height of the Holocaust; heaps of construction waste near his studio that have
accumulated since unknown times.
From images he has witnessed directly or
confirmed through photographs and video materials from the past, AN Gyungsu
draws up ruined landscapes and carefully layers them onto canvas. He discovers
multiple layers of landscape within each scene, gathering them together and
overlaying them upon the smooth surface.
Installation view
of 《Layered》 ©ARARIO
MUSEUMYet AN Gyungsu's scenes always lean toward
the outside of the painting. The outside might refer to the physical exterior
beyond the picture frame or another landscape that extends beyond the screen.
Standing there, the artist continually pushes viewers into the parallax that
occurs between the layers of accumulated scenes, proposing a state of
suspension.
The viewers will wander through the layered
image landscapes, appreciating them as if viewing traditional landscape
paintings, drifting between scenes from different periods that touch upon
ruins.
