Set Byul LI (b.1970, S. Korea) lives in Daejeon and works in Seoul. 
Early on, the artist created paintings that intersect multiple layers of time and space through solo exhibitions such as ≪Green Catastrophe≫(2013), ≪Interface Scenery≫(2014), And ≪Layerscape≫(2022) has been released, and has dealt with the theme of social tragedy and the evils of reality hidden behind the scenery.

The key themes in her works are ‘green’ and ‘the human.’ Green, which should represent life, a place of respite, and a source of regeneration, seeps and clings to the skin—a kind of green that emanates from a system of capital that has now become our natural domain. Because seeing is always filtered through the desires of the subject who looks, a gaze that is both distorted and captivated, she questions this through the act of placing various objects or effects onto the face. Through these reconstructed landscapes and altered human forms, she explores the anguish and ethical questions of existence that emerge from the contradictions of capitalism, such as the tension between the artificial and the natural, ecological crises, and the subject in a digital society.

Panuwat "Pay" Kamdee, born in 1999 in Chiang Mai, Thailand, pursued his studies in Fine Arts at Silpakorn University, Bangkok, where he cultivated a unique style that merges traditional Thai art forms with modern techniques and natural pigments. His work often explores the concept of a societal harmonious allegory, symbolizing ideals of unity, balance, and peaceful coexistence. Drawing from Thai mythology and folklore, Pay expresses these themes in a surreal, dreamlike style, presenting accessible and playful pieces that resonate with audiences. His work reflects his childhood memories, making his art both nostalgic and relatable.

Pay has exhibited extensively both in Thailand and internationally, earning acclaim for his innovative approach and thoughtful exploration of environmental and social issues. His art subtly addresses these concerns, inspiring audiences to recognize the depth of his work and its connection to Thai cultural identity. He has also participated in various community art projects, using his platform to promote sustainability and cultural preservation.

Since returning from Japan, AeGoh has passionately showcased the uniqueness of her painting through five solo exhibitions, beginning in 2016. Notably, from 2017 onward, she has cultivated a distinctive artistic realm by establishing her home in the heart of a serene forest, where she creates semi-abstract works that embody the vibrant colors of nature. The artist perceives her family, everyday individuals, plants, animals, light, wind, and still life as equitable beings that engage and coexist within nature, capturing the shared rhythms of life on her canvases. AeGoh's work originates from her personal narratives but expands into universally relatable expressions of life through simplified forms and harmonious color combinations viewed from a liberated perspective.

The narrative in literature, as a distinctive discourse system, is based on real life. Through logical coherence, description, lyricism, and interpretation, it creates a distance between fiction and objective reality. The creative inspiration for this exhibition's works originates from Yan Jingzhou's journey to the UK. However, the imagery of British elements goes beyond regional characteristics. Much like accomplished science fiction writers and film directors, Yan Jingzhou, through the creation of an alternative world, brings to light historical or contemporary truths that often elude conventional narratives.
Yan Jingzhou's creations are consistently rich with imagination. His unique perspective, akin to a distorted mirror, reflects an apparently similar yet exaggerated infinite world within the confines of a finite frame. In the town of "Buster" in the fictional world constructed by Yan Jingzhou, most characters still possess the classic characteristics of the "Old Buster." The difference lies in Yan Jingzhou's artistic iteration, expanding from a focus on specific character images to a more extensive depiction of various domains through the technique of fictional narrative. One could say that Buster permeates every nook and cranny of the town. Essentially, Buster and the town can be situated in any corner of the world.
In the construction and portrayal of scenes, Yan Jingzhou exhibits a more precise and vivid mastery. He skillfully intertwines reality and imagination through metaphorical techniques, reflecting the authenticity of life and reconstructing a colorful world. In the town of Buster, seemingly ordinary scenes reflect the humorous aspects of everyday life. The simple tone both highlights the charm of the characters and contrasts with the bitterness of life.  The narratives within the town can unfold in diverse directions, accommodating individuals of varying identities and colors. The plot may feature straightforward actions or embrace a diverse amalgamation of characters and settings, transitioning from a semi-realistic portrayal to a novel aesthetic creation and narrative expression.
In front of the green dessert shop in the West district, a police officer holding doughnuts in both hands unexpectedly locks eyes with a thief who, in disguise, is attempting to slip away. At a bar in the North district's nightlife scene, a bartender with a face covered in mayonnaise casts a sidelong glance at a drunken patron lying down. The youngster peddling chewing gum on the diagonal street in the West district during the day morphs into a playful ghost reveling in the East district at night. Around a long table, individuals of different skin tones, each with a distinct expression, gaze at the baked beans held by the first person. In a fast-food restaurant, two adults are distributing three kinds of condiments to seven children, and so forth. Countless stories are unfolding in the town—upper and lower districts, the sky, dinner parties, exams, str

Alex Jo’s work, which is bright, bold, and colorful, is in stark contrast to his actual appearance, who enjoys wearing achromatic colors and has an introverted personality. The reason why he prefers bright and colorful colors in his works is that he can express himself in a different way that he cannot show outwardly. While using pop-up colors as point colors, the greatest charm of his work is the comfort that stands out in harmony. The balance of pop-up colors presents the coexistence of comfort and splendor. Alex Jo composed and developed this color coordination based on organic and vintage colors which is inspired from the old pillars of traditional Korean houses and naturally dyed Hanbok (Korean traditional wear) garments with fruits and plants. In his work, what stands out along with the strong colors are the straight lines that give off a masculine feeling. It is also a beautiful characteristic of Alex Jo’s work that he has completed the subtle emotional delivery that harmoniously completes a rather cold line and a warm story by using the story of the artist's own warm sensibility as a message while using masculine shapes as the main motif. 

Like a pop star, Artist Noemie Bablet intentionally pushes the boundaries between industry and art. Much like our society’s positive bias, Bablet’s work impresses far beyond its initial impression of charm and effortlessness, demonstrating impressive delicacy and meticulousness to convey a sense of beauty and elegance.

Twenty-one artists were invited to pay homage to Goya: Fernando Arrabal, Miquel Barceló, Beatriz González, Jenny Holzer, Cristina Iglesias, Anne Imhof, Alfredo Jaar, Koo Jeong A, Alexander Kluge, Robert Longo, Cildo Meireles, Precious Okoyomon, Philippe Parreno, Raymond Pettibon, Elena Del Rivero, Rachel Rose, Thomas Schütte, Santiago Sierra, Rosemarie Trockel, Luc Tuymans, and Adrián Villar Rojas.

Soyoung Seo is an artist who converts figurative components into abstract images. She recently worked in several fields, including graphics, painting, and design, and combining illustration with NFT works. She develops her work in the form of collages, pursuing the unique atmosphere formed by the collision of unrelated places and objects, and is fascinated by humans' raw and unrefined emotions. Since she describes her work as a series of daydreams and investigations, she allows the audience to join the beautiful and unstable realm of dreams and unconsciousness that we lose as we grow older, providing a vibrant world of inner sensations.

SanOh Lee works with materials such as soil, paper, and graphite to poetically reflect on life and death. By recognizing structural similarities in the ways text and image are generated, the artist explores diverse modes of creative language.

Drawing from elements found in books, Lee constructs relationships between text and image, unfolding compositions in a manner akin to writing. Through this process, the work expands into surreal visual landscapes.

The artist is particularly drawn to the image of the bird—as a medium that reveals what is sensed but unseen, such as intuition or premonition, and as a messenger that moves between the realms of the living and the dead.

Qwaya is an artist who has built a distinct painterly world rooted in quiet nocturnal reflection and personal records. For him, night is a time to sort through the day and revisit memories—a space for contemplation that remains grounded in reality yet gently distanced from it. This sensibility appears on the canvas, where figures and still lifes coexist with a subtle sense of separation.

Though he employs bright and vivid colors, a quiet darkness and stillness permeate his work. His figures bear calm, ambiguous expressions, which he considers the most natural state. While his work reflects a longing for an ideal, it also closely resonates with the realities of contemporary life.

Through photoscollected via the web, Kim's work embodies the imagined nature and conveys it as though it had been experienced in real life. While traditionalartworks convey nature seen through sight as seen while painting, Kim captures the essence of the asynchronous image seized throughphotography. The "On the waves." series expresses the location and moment where fiction and reality collide by overlapping the seasons andweather experienced on an anonymous beach and in real life. With shards of senses colliding and combining, these pieces try to aggregateeveryday life with remnants of incidental sensations. The imagined sense of movement is artistically articulated, recreated with a thin sense ofspace, and placed on a canvas based on digital photographs. It takes in the image from the monitor and applies a tiny bit of creativity to create awhole new visual world. The moment's image is caught and the invisible components are conveyed visually through the waves that carry theseason's colors. By contemplating and creating a virtual environment, Kim continues her search to find a distinct depth amid the priceless andsuperficial details of precise pieces. By doing this, she emphasizes leaving sensory imprints and communicating beyond the confines of realityand fantasy.

Wannita Tankeng
b.1999, Phuket, Thailand

Wannita Tankeng graduated with her Bachelor of Arts degree from King Mongkut's Institute of Technology Ladkrabang and with her Master of Arts degree from the Faculty of Painting, Sculpture and Graphic Arts, at Silpakorn University.
Wannita is interested in exploring how lights and colors are reflected through objects - inspiring her to create semi-abstract paintings.  The artist is fascinated by the allure of shiny surfaces and recognized for her ability to capture the luminous qualities of objects, encouraging us to think about how light and shadows interact around us. Capturing the essence of objects through attention to detail and her brushwork, she transforms recognizable objects into abstract renderings, highlighting the simplicity and natural beauty of ordinary elements and moments surrounding us.

Jaeyeon Leem explores a strange sense of novelty from unfamiliar sensations. The artist earned her undergraduate degree in painting from Ewha Womans University and is currently pursuing her master’s in the same institution. In her painting, peculiar emotions entangle with the world and result in its own fantasies. As our familiar world feels inadequate and incomplete, this uncharted mystic realm exerts a greater force upon us. The mythic motifs that appear in her work serve to amplify these sensations of strangeness, mystery, and fear that we have not encountered previously in our world. The unseen and unexperienced world feels like the underbelly of the real world, yet it is a space that makes us conscious of the depths within the human mind. 
Her art seeks to reconcile the coexistence of dualities such as reality and unreality, desire and repression, good and evil, beauty and ugliness, and within these tensions, she expresses the will and hope of life, aspirations, yearnings and fears. Her abstract gestures, intertwined with hidden forms, continually weave a narrative between the worlds she has experienced and those she has never encountered, revealing the artist's connection to an alien and mystical realm. The artist’s work is akin to myths - mysterious yet not fantasy or fiction bur rather a world that closely resembles the non-fictional, one she has sensed and felt.

Taesoo Lee is a Korean sculptor known for creating heavy-looking objects using lightweight materials. His work explores the gap between perception and reality by crafting hyper-realistic sculptures of boulders and steel beams that visually defy gravity. Through optical illusion and material deception, Lee challenges viewers’ assumptions and offers a playful yet thought-provoking commentary on how we perceive the world.

Maverick Abac's practice explores painting and collages on various media as a reflection of his consciousness and upbringing. Navigating the realm of memory, his works are known best for their pop surrealist meditations of our individual and collective psychological experiences.

Hijo Nam is a Korean-born contemporary artist based in New York, with a BFA and MFA from Pratt Institute.
Her work spans painting, installation, and textiles, exploring themes of existence, cycles, and motherhood.
In her recent exhibition Threads of Origin, she visualized the flow of memory, myth, and healing.

Featured Artists on Artue