HYANGMOK BAIK

Works

Home, 2024

Biography

The work of Hyangmok Baik continues in a tradition of bold, somewhat crude, almost post-aesthetic contemporary painting. His work combines a flattened perspective; a raw, heavily-worked surface; unpredictable colour-schemes; and irreverent subject matter – from disembodied heads to ducks to platters of fruit or bottles of champagne – the paintings seem atemporal, acultural, ahistorical, and, paradoxically, universally relatable.

Through recontextualization, deconstruction and a fair amount of dark humour, Baik’s paintings seem just as relevant in California just as much as they articulate the laissez-faire, post-punk lifestyle of a South Korean millennial.

The manner in which he speaks about his work would not seem out of place in a Haruki Murakami novel:

It seems cloudy and gray, like a dream, but it’s expressed very clearly. All the elements in my work are arranged through my imagination into a single story. In the very middle of it, A person: he or she or it, is myself or a portrait of a modern person at the same time. A character. Sometimes we can remember the characters in our dreams, but mostly, we can’t. I try to express the stories that no one can remember but me, as dreams i’ve never experienced, and as uncannily familiar moments someone has maybe experienced before, in the past.

Through his usage of familiar, if uncanny referents, the work offers a fresh perspective to the conversation of painting. With a diverse arsenal of motifs, symbols, and stylistic tendencies, the paintings are elevated to a new kind of complex and semiotic language. The paintings seem to connect through a visual connectivity apart from language – where the visual has been disassociated from meaning and reduced to a series of images, colours, shapes, and symbols that may (or may not) have a real-life reference and are left for the viewer to impart further meaning.

HYANGMOK BAIK (b. 1990, Seoul, South Korea) currently lives and works in Seoul. He graduated in 2019 with a MA in Fine Art from Hongik University.

Solo exhibitions include: You Know How Much I Love You, Anzai Gallery, Tokyo (2024); While You Were Sleeping, BEERS London, London (2023); I Know What You Did Last Summer, OTI Hong Kong (2022); The Garden of Eden, OTI LA, Los Angeles (2021); Forgotten by Us, BEERS London, London (2021); Imagine Utopia, Gallery Stan, Seoul, South Korea (2020); Wanderlust, Gallery Marron, Seoul, South Korea (2019); solo show at Gallery Meme, Seoul, South Korea (2018) and; a solo show at Gana Art Space, Seoul, South Korea (2016).

Group exhibitions include: How It's Going, 193 Gallery, Paris (2024); Coexist, Gana Art, LA (2024); Family & Friends, BEERS London (2023); Human, Choi & Choi Gallery, Seoul, South Korea (2023); Bitter Nostalgia (with BEERS artist Adébayo Bolaji), Saatchi Gallery, London (2022); Yohood, Shanghai, China (2019); Gallery Ili, Seoul, South Korea (2019); Mercielbiss, Busan, Korea (2019); Stan Art Center, Seoul, South Korea (2019); Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan (2019).

Fairs include: Art Fair Tokyo, with Anzai Gallery, Tokyo, Japan (2024); Kiaf Art Fair, with OTI and Gallery Stan, Seoul, Korea (2022); Art Busan, Gallery Stan, Busan, South Korea (2022); Yeonhee Art Fair, Seoul, South Korea (2019); KIAF, South Korea (2019) and; Art Busan, Busan, Korea (2019).