Yim Ja-hyuk Solo Exhibition A Piece of Paper 종잇조각

2019.6.29 ~ 2019.7.20 @Gallery Frank Taal, Rotterdam in collaboration with PHK18 _ MARTER Projects

The Korean artist Yim Ja-hyuk, born in 1976, lives and works in Seoul. 

Yim Ja-hyuk's solo exhibition "A Piece of Paper" displays a multitude of small drawings created by cutting out colored papers. Instead of being displayed under glass, they are lightly pasted on the large “immaterial” picture frame-like shapes which are installed on the gallery walls, on a quest to concentrate on not only each small piece in a large space but also the nature of paper: lightness, easiness, and simplicity.

Yim's lighthearted drawings are full of images she encountered in everyday life, such as white shadows or a window blind, blueberries on a fork, fallen leaves kept in a fence, and a balloon beneath a ceiling. She seems to see the world as a picture, and the picture plane is a field where she strives to find the orders of the picture. Seeing the world as a picture means she approaches real spaces as the flat surface and finds idiosyncratic visual elements and compositions from them. At the same time, by positioning on the picture plane, the quotidian images depart to form a poem-like structure in which words get segmented and take overtones rather than make descriptive narratives on the subject matter she has experienced. Dealing with figurative and abstract images, scheme and happening, and slackness and meticulousness, she locates the work to be ephemeral but constant, nothing but not-just-anything. 

Yim Ja-hyuk has worked in two-dimensional art ranging from drawings, prints, and paintings to wall paintings. She lives and works in Seoul, Korea and this is the tenth solo exhibition, the first solo show in the Netherlands.

MARTER Projects is part of PHK18 and initiator of an exchange program between Korea and the Netherlands. Since five years, exhibitions of Korean and Dutch artist have reciprocally taken place at various selected venues and galleries.