NYAB Event - Seong Gil Heo “The City”

Seong Gil Heo “The City”

Elga Wimmer PCC

This event has ended.

ElgaWimmerPCC, proudly presents Seong Gil Heo: The City, a solo exhibition curated by Suechung Koh, that will run from May 28 – June 15, 2013 with an opening reception on Thursday May 30th from 6-8 PM.

Heo’s ink on Korean paper paintings and mixed media works focus on cities devoid of human presence. Humanity is implied through his use of street signs, traffic lights, telephone booths, and electric wiring. Heo’s drawings of buildings appear so perfect leaving us with little evidence of both his hand and society’s existence. And yet, Heo’s cities are not bereft of feeling as one would expect of sterile environments. Present are electric wires that crisscross at many points that symbolize communication between people. Present are traffic lights that imply cars, post office boxes that allude to older forms of communication and also shop signs, street signs, traffic symbols and directions in the artist’s native Korean language.

Hyppodamian city plans based on the mathematical grid characterized by order and regularity are evident in Heo’s cities when he’s painting New York or other western cities. But, when depicting his native Seoul, he paints it, as is; one building above another, or abutting, as in the beehive style of many middle-eastern cities. This is partly due to the mountainous origin of the Korean topography that also contains lots of steps leading up its steeply built levels. The buildings although not that high, because they are set on mountainous terrain, take on the look of the peaks of the high backgrounds.
Seong Gil Heo was born and raised in Daegu, South Korea and earned his MFA in Asian Painting at this city’s Kye-myung University Graduate School. He has exhibited in Istanbul, HongKong, Singapore, China and this will be his first show in New York. He has planned a subsequent solo exhibition that will be held at Tenri Cultural Institute, New York, this coming December.

[Image: Seong Gil Heo “THE CITY” (2011), Acrylic on Canvas, 51.2 x 88 in.]