Paik Seung ah

“I want my skin to be present in the painting, rather than be an image of my skin in the painting. I want the viewers to experience the self-meditative process inside the landscape of my corporeal body.” Paik draws her painterly technique from the Korean portrait tradition of 육리문법 (yuk-ri-mun-bup), an artistic style through which the identity of the sitter is revealed through showing the minute details of a face – indeed, here Seung Ah Paik’s own identity is positioned as intrinsically expressed through the physicality of her body; “Every wrinkle, scar, callus, dead skin, and lump of cellulite reflects one’s history and personality.” In a time where flawlessness is celebrated as innately beautiful, and when the separation of mind and body is ever more initiated by our reliance on technology, these landscapes of flesh present and celebrate the inescapability of our own corporeality.

The basic idea of my practice is to express my ego through paintings by representing my body as a set of objects from the perspectives that are most familiar to people. The perspectives play the most important roles in my works. They are self-portraits from the painter’s own direct view. This suggests the viewers to feel as though they are looking at their own bodies. Moreover, by subtly combining images from diverse perspectives rather than using just one perspective, they become slightly uncanny. This is because I treat my body as a reconstructed object rather than a self-image, in order to question the distance between the artist myself and the created image. Skin and texture are another important aspects to my paintings. I have transformed the canvas into the skin and by this I tried to emphasize the intimacy between myself and the paintings.

CV

Education
2012 MFA Fine Art, Goldsmiths, University of London
2006 BA in Fashion Design Women’s Wear, Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design
2003 BFA in Oriental Painting, Seoul National University

Solo Exhibition
2016 Lubomirov/Angus-Hughes, London
2014 Hus Gallery, London 2013, , Jubilee Gallery, Nagoya
2013 Lubomirov-Easton, London
2009 Noam Gallery, Seoul

Group Exhibition
2016 Saatchi Gallery, London
2014 Hanwon Gallery, Seoul
2013 Asia House, London
2012 Degree Art Gallery, London
2012 Barge House, London
2008 Gallery Dansung, Seoul
2008 Seoul Arts High School Alumni Exhibition, Sejong Center, Seoul
2008 Gallery Gaia, Seoul
2007 Gallery Kwanhoon, Seoul
2007 Gallery Gaia, Seoul