The title “Scenographic imagination” refers to the unique set of sceneries the works create together that awakes all kinds of senses. Taken inspiration from the theatrical canon, where both the senses of time and space play an essential role in the artists’ creative processes, the show channels the definination of a multidisciplinary artist proposed in Darwin Reid Payne’s same title on theater criticism, as someone equipped with a special vision “spanning all the arts” that extend and amplify underlying meanings of the production. Intentionally blurring the line between reality and unreality, each work itself a carefully constructed labyrinth out of the artist’s imagination that induces a sense of beguilement while its material and immaterial elements are well balanced on the surface of the canvas. The show aims to introduce a roster of contemporary Korean artists, both emgering and established, to the Chinese audience.Taking their observation and extensive research as their starting point and sources of continual learning, these artists employ painting as their main medium to explore a wide variety of themes. They constantly experiement with different ways in which the abstract interplay between paintings and time and space could bring the paintings to life on the wall. Their diverse techniques and methods, as demonstrated in these clearest examples of their impulse to extend the realm of pictorial practice, pursue the questionning of conventional understanding of painting as a genre and continue to push its boundaries on several fronts.

-Written by beijingcommune