Perrotin Seoul is delighted to present Imagine, a group exhibition featuring thirteen artists represented by the gallery. This exhibition offers a diverse array of artworks that showcase each artist's unique artistic language, spanning various media across paintings, sculptures, installations, and photography. Through the exhibited works, which hint at the infinite possibilities and potential of visual art, the show sparks our artistic inspiration and imagination by inviting visitors to explore new sensation and thoughts.  

Iván Argote  

Born in Bogota, Columbia in 1983, Iván Argote is an artist based in France working freely across various media including sculpture, installation, and film to question the close relationship between people, institutions, beliefs, and systems of power. Through the affect, emotion, and humor in his work, he proposes a critical approach to dominant historical narratives, attempting to decenter them. Argote’s previous presentations of intervening in public space test our special relationship with history and relics. By simulating the removal of a statue in honor of Marshal Joseph Galliéni in Paris (Au Revoir Joseph Gallieni, 2021) and the relocation of a sculpture dedicated to Christopher Columbus in Madrid (Paseo, 2022) the artist metaphorically exposes our illusion and attachment to the fictional narratives that constitute the history of nations.  

Daniel Arsham  

Daniel Arsham is a 1980 Cleveland-born who studied painting at the Cooper Union in New York and now works across various genres and mediums including painting, sculpture, drawing, film, fashion, and architecture. “The Fictional Archeology” is a key to understanding Arsham’s practice stems from the recognition that our present will eventually be the past in the distant future. The artist creates plastered objects of everyday items such as cameras, microphones, cassette players, and payphones, and with geological mediums such as sand and volcanic ash, transforms them to appear as if they had just been excavated, thus making the present past. In this eerie yet playful works of Arsham which sits somewhere between Romanticism and Pop Art, present, future, and past metaphorically collide, as the artist experiments with the timelessness of symbols and representations throughout cultures.  

Sophie Calle  

Sophie Calle, born in Paris in 1953, is a French conceptual artist who is best known for her distinct narrative elements and frequent combination of images with text. At the 1980 Paris Biennale, Calle presented a photo documentation Sleepers (Les dormeurs), where she photographed 27 people sleeping in her bed one after the other. The body and everyday life of her and the others often become a key subject material in Calle’s works. Her projects blur the boundaries between the intimate and the public, reality and fiction, art and life, drawing a universal connection with the viewers. 

Mathilde Denize  

Mathilde Denize was born in 1986 in Sarcelles, France, and graduated from the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. She explores various media including painting, installation, sculpture, performance, and video, driven by a quest to uncover meaning in our fragmented present. Denize collects discarded objects, cuts up her previous works, and weaves them into new forms with found materials. These remnants of the past serve as a metaphor for the complexity of human being. Influenced by experimental artists like Carolee Scheemann, Denize also utilizes the body as a medium in her works, delving into themes of representation and transformation. This approach of excavating old objects, repurposing, and transforming them, and aesthetically engaging with them while retaining their fragments and components is a fundamental aspect of Denize's artistic practice.  

Bernard Frize  

Bernard Frize, a leading figure in French contemporary painting, was born in Saint-Mandé, France in 1949 and now works based in Berlin, Germany. From the 1970s to the present, Frize expanded his practice of conceptual abstraction throughout half a century. In Frize’s paintings, ‘abstraction’ is not presented in a difficult or heavy language but as a frame filled with sensational colors and energetic brushstrokes. Above his brushstrokes, paint spreads out with a mind of its own, disrupting structured lines and the remains of ambiguous masses and traces of the paint suggest all our senses: sight, sound, and touch. Breaking free of the traditional stereotype of abstract painting as esoteric, Frize’s paintings draw a new interaction from the viewers through his original expressive touches and reflect his complex and ever-evolving relations between him as an artist and his life, the act and materiality of painting. 

Hans Hartung  

Born in Leipzig, German, Hans Hartung (1904-1989) achieved interna- tional recognition as a seminal figure of art informel, a movement that emerged in France during World War II. Beyond the apparent spontaneity of his distinctively bold and almost calligraphic gestural abstraction, rationalism equally informed his style, which arose out of an early interest in the relationship between aesthetics and mathematics—particularly the harmony of the golden ratio. Believing strongly in the freedom of thought and action, Hartung forged a unique blend of abstraction and gestural painting, producing works characterized by thick lines and smudges reminiscent of calligraphy. His breakthrough came when he was award- ed the Grand Prize for painting at the 1960 Venice Biennale, marking a significant turning point in his artistic journey. Hartung began to improvise on canvas and experimented with new methods, including fast-drying acrylic colors, and scraping and sprinkling techniques. The quest for balance between spontaneity and perfection remained at the core of Hartung’s painterly aesthetics until his passing.  

Thilo Heinzmann  

Born in Berlin, Germany in 1969, Thilo Heinzmann studied at the Städelschule in Frankfurt. Heinzmann is a painter in the emphatic sense of the word, fully invested in reinventing and recalibrating the capacities of the medium, while keeping a keen eye on that painting’s rich history. Using chipboard, styrofoam, nail polish, resin, pigment, fur, cotton wool, porcelain, aluminum, and hessian, Heinzmann has worked on developing new paths and a distinctive visual language in his practice. His interest lies in the presence that each work creates, which is further  enhanced by his paintings’ powerful tactile qualities. It invites the viewer to notions on the fundamental and essential elements of painting: composition, surface, form, color, light, texture, and time.  

Kim Chong-Hak  

Born in 1937, Sinuiju, Pyonganbuk-do, North Korea, Kim Chong-Hak studied at the Seoul National University's Department of Painting and is best known as the "Painter of Seoraksan" and "Painter of Flowers." Although the artist initially produced abstract informel paintings until the 1970s, since 1980, he has resided in Seoraksan Mountain and began creating representational paintings in his studio at the foothills. Considering that the prevailing style in the Korean art scene at the time was monochrome, Kim’s vibrant and intense primary-color compositions represented a radical departure from the times. The artist’s depictions of grasses, flowers, birds, stars, the moon, and the changing seasons imbue his canvases with a unique atmosphere and emotional resonance, establishing him as a distinctive figure in the history of Korean modern painting. For Kim, nature served as both an object of admiration and a wellspring of artistic inspiration, leading him to align his work with the law of nature while exploring the essence of art itself. The fantastical hues and landscapes in Kim’s oeuvre transcend temporal and spatial boundaries, inviting viewers to connect with the condensed energy and vitality of nature.  

Lee Bae  

Born in Cheongdo, Gyeongsangbuk-do, Korea, in 1956, Lee Bae works in between Paris, Seoul and Cheongdo since 1989 after graduating from Hongik University’s Painting Department. Charcoal is a key element in Lee Bae’s monochromes which hold an image of the cycle of life through charcoals’ characteristic of being produced when firing wood then also used to revive fire. Up to the early 2000s, Lee Bae created minimal and exquisite works utilizing “charcoal” itself, such as assemblage on canvas with fragments or chunks of charcoal or presenting carbonized wooden sculptures as objects. Working primarily with carbon black, reminiscent of charcoal, Lee Bae develops his abstract aesthetic by crossing the boundaries between drawing, sculpture, installation, and paintings based on irregular yet fundamental gestures.  

Mr.  

Mr. was born in 1969 in Cupa, Japan. As one of the protégés of Takashi Murakami, a core figure of the Superflat movement, Mr. has been acclaimed for elevating low art, namely manga and anime, into a high form of expression, thereby transforming a uniquely Japanese aesthetic into a global lexicon. The creation of Mr.'s cartoonish characters is based on the artist's awareness of his own otaku tendencies and the psychological trauma caused by adversities such as natural disasters, war, and social unrest. Beneath the innocence of his characters lies a complex psychological state influenced by these fears, which intensified significantly after World War II. This juxtaposition of form and subject results in visually striking and thought-provoking scenes that captivate viewers.  

Takashi Murakami  

Takashi Murakami, a leading figure in Japanese contemporary and a pop artist, was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1962 and studied Japanese painting at Tokyo University of the Arts, where he later achieved a PhD. Murakami introduced the concept of the "Superflat," which blurs the boundaries between fine and popular art, incorporating and combining otaku culture, a prominent aspect of Japanese mass culture, into high art. In 2000, Murakami curated a group exhibition Superflat at the Parco Museum, Tokyo and Parco Gallery, Nagoya and presented the show again at Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in the following year. Through the exhibition, where he claimed the "flatness" of Japanese art history and the cultural phenomenon in which social classes and popular preference became "flattened" and the distinction between high and low was blurred, the artist sought to explore the interrelationships between Western culture and Japanese society and art, and anime and Japanese painting. He continues his experimentation with the boundaries of art, exploring its infinite possibilities through collaborations with fashion brands, corporations, entertainment, influencers, and commercial characters.

Park Seo-bo  

Park Seo-bo (1931-2023), a key figure in the Dansaekhwa movement and a master of Korean art, was born in Yecheon, Gyeonsangbuk-do, Korea. Park pioneered Dansaekhwa, which emerged in the 1970s, a post-war era in Korea, and became the most significant movement in Korean art. He is renowned for his Écriture series that highlights the concept of performance through subconscious acts, repetition, meditative practice, and the materiality of hanji (Korean mulberry paper). His series of paintings, evolving over time through changes in materials and techniques, align with the core ethos of Dansaekhwa, where the act of painting is completed by emptying the purposefulness of the painting. Park also aims to bridge traditional Korean ontological ideas with Western naturalism, which were severed after the war. He believes that nature is not in opposition to humans and civilization, but rather an entity intrinsically connected to society. This perspective is reflected in all aspects of Park’s work, including colors and materials.  

Paola Pivi  

Born in 1971 in Milan, Italy, Paola Pivi is a multimedia artist based in both Milan and Alaska. She initially pursued studies in chemistry at Politecnico di Milano but later found her passion for art and enrolled in Accademia di Brera. Describing art as an "impossible miracle," Pivi utilizes unrealistic elements as materials for her work, creating a surreal dimension of everyday life that never truly existed. Her enigmatic creations blend the alien with the familiar. Through altering the scale of commonplace objects or applying unconventional colors and materials, Pivi prompts viewers to perceive them in a new light. Spanning sculpture, video, photography, performance, and installation, the artist continually pushes the boundaries of perception, turning the impossible into possible.