Emerging Asian Artists and Experimental Spirit Take the Stage in Seoul
For Seoul’s seventh annual Asian Students and Young Artists Art Festival (ASYAAF), a vibrant presentation of emerging contemporary artists, Gallery LVS was chosen to curate the overseas section. Seeking out Asian artists from outside of Korea, the gallery invited over 30 individuals——all age 30 and under—from across the continent to show alongside the main program’s carefully adjudicated open-call exhibition of young Korean talent. For enthusiasts and aficionados of all stripes, it’s an art event not to be missed; for example, the festival’s New Drawing section debuts this year, bringing together accessibly priced works for first-time collectors. Art Director Taeho Kim, professor at Seoul Women’s University, has characterized the young exhibitors as possessing “purity and experimental spirit”—cutting across all formats and media from painting and sculpture to the digital arts.
In LVS’s overseas section—the only curated section at the festival—painting serves as a potent support for an invigorating diversity of styles and works, from Liang Qunfeng’s exquisitely colored oils of quaintly tilting, brick and timber constructions nestled in the rural Chinese hillside (see: Fenced Village on Highlands and Labor under the Sun, both 2013); to the crackled acrylic surface of Indra Dodi’s charming Elephant (2014); to Rejeesh Sarovar’s mural-like narrative canvases marrying multiple textures, along with man and jungle (Eclipse, 2014); to Macau-based artist Lai Sio Kit’s muted, almost abstract aerial view of a scalloped cement terrace encompassed by dense foliage (Planting 8, 2013).
Riffing on the art historical and material values of paint, Japanese artist Mizuki Shigeta deftly deconstructs manga-like imagery in oil (as in The Beast of the Bottom of the Flower, 2010) while Hong Kong artist Chow Chun Fai re-imagines the 17th-century chiaroscuro of Caravaggio in a large-scale photographic panel installation (Supper at Emmaus, 2014), featuring a cast of distinctively Eastern characters and a mysteriously empty dinner plate.
“2014 Asian Students and Young Artists Art Festival (ASYAAF)” is on view at Culture Station Seoul 284, South Korea, July 29th–August 24th, 2014.
