Installation view of 《Heavy Breathers》 © Gallery Baton
Gallery Baton presents a solo exhibition 《Heavy Breathers》 by artist Bae Yoon Hwan, on
view through July 31.
Bae Yoon Hwan has long expanded the
narrative possibilities of painting by reconstructing accumulated experiences
and collected images into forms of pictorial storytelling. In recent years, his
attention has shifted toward the irreversible transformations of the
contemporary world, registering the conditions of the Anthropocene through his
own perceptual and imaginative lens.
Newly introduced motifs—including
elephants, noses, and functional objects—project landscapes of survival onto
the artist’s field of perception, presenting liminal terrains in which bodies
and objects, sensation and structure, sustain one another.
Recent works mark a gradual reduction of
narrative elements. Charcoal-based paintings, in particular, introduce a more
compressed and sensory visual language through relationships of line, surface,
light, and shadow.
Installation view of 《Heavy Breathers》 © Gallery Baton
These developments reflect the artist’s
increasing interest in omission, emptiness, and restraint, asking what kinds of
states or sensations may emerge once narrative has been withdrawn from the
image.
The exhibition title, “Heavy Breathers,”
begins with breathing as the smallest unit of being alive. In Breathe,
an elephant remains alone within a desolate landscape, repeating a learned
gesture and suspending a small breath in the air.
Installation view of 《Heavy Breathers》 © Gallery Baton
Breathing here does not function as a
metaphor for hope, but as a sustained response to pressure. The body becomes a
site where social conditions and personal memory intersect, while repetition
persists as a mechanism of survival.
Across the exhibition, Bae traces forms of
existence situated within the irreversible conditions of the Anthropocene.
Between the desire to endure and the gradual objectification imposed by the
environment, an allegorical tension unfolds across the surface of the works.
