Credit Curated by ThisWeekendRoom Collaborated with ASIA ART CENTER, Weserhalle ArtistsㅣCarlo D’Anselmi, Maxim Brandt, Shinyoung Park
 
TextㅣJihyung Park
 Frame | Yoorim Kim, Soho Photographs | Jungwoo Lee 
 Oscillate Sequence departs from the characteristics found in the works of Carlo D’Anselmi, Maxim Brandt, and Shinyoung Park, who produce images from different motives. Each of their paintings is a chain of mise-en-scène woven by their imagination. The objects depicted in the frames, varying in texture and size, are composed of everyday people and objects, yet they possess a theatrical and unrealistic feel. The artists use intense contrasts of light and shade and a wide spectrum of colors, appropriating traditional representational techniques as needed, and constructing a poetic formative language through the careful collage of visual references. The exhibition positions the three artists as editors who weave a narrative based on independent sources and seek to examine what aspects of reality the montages they present reflect.

 Carlo D’Anselmi depicts lovers under the light of nature and city night, as well as the flowers, birds, cats and trees that fill their surroundings. His paintings echo the footsteps of predecessors like Paul Gauguin and Henri Rousseau, who painted with a primal energy. His paintings feature warm exchanges of gaze, varied materials, and a rhythm of bold strokes and shimmering colors. Ordinary acts, such as lying down, reading a book, or making eye contact, combined with the intensity of the light falling on the body, the various shapes of shadows, and the abstract patterns interspersed throughout suggest a mysterious dreamlike story. The subtle facial expressions of figures with closed eyes, still and aware of the air, smells, light and temperature, evoke a myriad of emotions that language cannot fully describe yet clearly exist. In particular, the fundamental sense of love and solidarity that has motivated humanity to create for centuries a dynamic source of thought in his work.

 Maxim Brandt, on the other hand, is interested in the universal messages of the world and chooses to apply the implicit logic of poetry to his work. Traditional oil painting techniques, graffiti and sleek digital graphic elements collide in his paintings to create a fictionalized space. For example, a skeleton suddenly appears in the middle of a sunset-filled romantic painting, while graffiti and objects symbolizing themes from literature, music, and art are added in front of a dark forest setting that resembles a scene from a science fiction novel.  These symbols are drawn from real-life creatures, unrelated events, or borrowed from cultural and artistic references. Each chaotic and beautiful utopia is a place filled with allegory and metaphor, breaking down the walls between everyday life and dreams, human and non-human, present and past, nature and civilization, and creating a space for fictional scenes to penetrate reality.

 Shinyoung Park’s monotype works are densely populated with iconography, both artificial and natural. Her figures might be hanging colorfully patterned fish from a tree or deep in thought, unaware of the birds flying overhead. These cryptic scenes are extracted from different fragments of reality she has recently witnessed, forming an omnibus of thoughts. The restriction of physical movement due to the pandemic has opened up new possibilities for the synchronic and diachronic movement of time. From browsing vintage photos online to buying old objects to witnessing environment changes through screens, Park feels curiosity, anxiety, fear, and nostalgia for what humans have built. These changes in how she experiences the world soon influence the images she creates, evolving her work into landscapes woven with increasingly complex symbols.

The three artists consider the micro and macro factors that shape their lives as the basis for their work. For them, the catalysts of art are the emotions triggered by relationships with others, the tensions and concerns arising between humans and nature, and the Vanitas question posed at every turn of life. Ultimately, these sequences oscillate between material bases and metaphysical ideas, slowly tapping into the audience’s memory and senses. 

TextㅣJihyung Park (Curator, ThisWeekendRoom)