Upcomming Exhibitions

Turn Your Lights On

2020-09-22 ~ 2020-12-27

Art space Gwanggyo’s new exhibition Turn Your Lights On is about a fundamental element that illuminates the world – Light. The light in the title illuminates that which the time and society shares across different spectrums, encompassing disparate perspectives and positionalities. The artists in the exhibition reflect on the presence, spatiality, and new meaning of ‘light’ as they see it through a wide range of interpretations. The light they present within the exhibition space, or its vestiges and waves, are critical elements that power different thoughts and forms of communication beyond the physical and visual phenomenon of light in our daily lives. This exhibition aims to introduce ‘light’ as it evolves from a natural element into embodiments of new meaning in conjunction with individual and social phenomena.

In Greek mythology, art originates from the daughter of Butades of Sciyon, who represented the silhouette of shadows cast by light. In the subsequent, long history of art, the particularities of one’s usage of light serves as a signature of the artist’s style or the aesthetic school they belong to. After Edison invented the light bulb, humanity acquired the ability to create light, turning it into something more than a mere tool for representation. Light is now used as a critical base material that conveys the artist’s thoughts, physically created and transformed to fuse with political, social, philosophical, aesthetic, and religions implications. In this process, light came to claim a place of its own in art by its sheer incandescence.

The exhibition presents the varied contexts of ‘light’ in three sections. The first is an exploration of the interrelationship between ‘light,’ time, and space. While lighted yet empty spaces are place where imaginary images operate along with the flow of time, an unfamiliar environment surrounded by uncanny light is the site of spatiality alone, devoid of any sense of time.

The second focuses on bodily felt waves, featuring light beyond visual perception. The light surrounding us exists in the form of waves, and also particle. Artists offer new interpretations and views of light based on their own individual experiences.

Light carried ritual significance from old. The aforementioned daughter of Butades may have, also, drawn the shadow of her lover as she implored the gods to bring him safely back from war. A flicker of light, shining through the dark, always carried people’s hope, yearnings, and remembrances. The artists who share their works in this last section represented events from the social reality they reside, with light as its medium.

Light can be imbued with different meanings, dependent upon one’s perspective. We hope that the varied views of light in this exhibition, brought forth by the artists’ own views, would engage the visitors in a multi-faceted interaction through intersections, collisions, and communications in their encounter with new perspectives.

VR exhibition open ! ☞ Going to see