Installation view of 《The Name of the Painting: The Stranger and the Director》 © nook gallery
Nook Gallery presents 《The Name of the Painting: The Stranger and the Director》, a two-person exhibition by Suh Dongwook and An Gyungsu, on view
through September 23.
《The Name of the Painting》 is a series of
exhibitions held by nook gallery every September. The exhibition title was
named with reference to Umberto Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose.
A phrase mentioned at the end of the novel is “Yesterday's rose endures in its
name, we hold empty names.”
Posting a question, “Do paintings also hold empty names?,” nook
gallery continues these two-person exhibitions.
Artists of this year are Suh Dongwook and An Gyungsu, whose
distinct artistic practices invite viewers to reconsider the enduring question,
"What is painting?" Through their works, the exhibition encourages
contemplation and exploration of the nature and possibilities of painting
itself.
Installation view of 《The Name of the Painting: The Stranger and the Director》 © nook gallery
Suh Dongwook continues to paint youth. The youth he captures is
less a matter of age than a season steeped in the quiet melancholy and sense of
loss that arise from knowing it cannot last.
As the artist notes, “Art embraces contradictions—purity and
filth, sweetness and bitterness alike.” In this sense, youth, with all its
inherent dualities, becomes an especially compelling subject for his art.
For An Gyungsu, landscape is not a place of settlement but a
site of adaptation. Having moved frequently between homes and studios on
Seoul’s outskirts, he understands place not as permanent, but as shaped by
departure.
He approaches it as a stranger—an outsider observing and forming
relationships from a position of in-betweenness. His paintings are not records
of specific locations, but sensations of “a certain place” where he once
stayed.
