The Korean Cultural Center in Hong Kong is pleased to present the 2021 Korean Young Artists Series ‘A needle in a haystack’ from April 28 to June 26 on the sixth to seventh floor of the Korean Cultural Center in Hong Kong(Central, PMQ) and online(VR). The exhibition showcases works of promising Korean artists LEE Insung, JEON Hyunsun and CHOI Sujin, who create paintings that travel between reality and fantasy, fact and fiction. It is the 4th exhibition from the Korean Young Artists Series. The series is aimed to promote and introduce promising and young Korean artists to the international art community.

‘A needle in a haystack’ is equivalent to the saying ‘a needle in a desert’ in Korea or ‘a needle in from the sea’ in Hong Kong. The artists all try to convey a specific message which is beyond representation and expression through their works, and viewers have to discover the essence of the works by themselves. It is difficult as ‘finding a piece of hay in a needle stack’.

Three artists build their unique “fantasy” worldviews in their works. In the narrative paintings of LEE Insung and CHOI Sujin, “fantasy” is revealed as a substance. The orange dots or balls depicted in LEE Insung’s paintings exist as different media in different works. In his other paintings, the orange balls serve as toys for entertainment, and sometimes they function as abstract symbols that people pursue and harvest. This reminds audiences of a play with a monologue and an aside when the characters in the painting act as if the balls were invisible, or treat something that does not exist as if it is a real object. Play is one of the art genres in which the boundary between reality and fantasy is blurred the most.

In the art world of CHOI Sujin, fantasy is the paint color used. Various and vivid colors appear in the clothes of characters or in the scenery. The character, which has probably reflected the artist herself, treats ‘color’ as a substance with physical properties. In connection with the colors of the landscape, the artist regards nature as a kind of her entertainment and enjoys her own imagination. JEON Hyunsun’s works can be defined as fine art between landscape paintings and still life paintings based on surrealism. The objects in this perfectly surreal landscape are as accurate as measuring with a ruler, and the ovals are as perfect as if they are drawn with a geometric shape ruler. Although the shadows of objects exist, space does not follow the perspective, and objects are just stacked and stacked on a plane.

For more exhibition details, please visit Korean Cultural Center in Hong Kong’s official homepage (http://hk.korean-culture.org/hk).

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