Cabinets of Curiosities

Kang Miro</a> and Jin Pul, on view from February 14 through March 16.</p><p>This show introduces a new intersection of sensation and emotion, merging Kang Miro’s dynamic exploration of light and paint with Jin Pul’s delicate portrayal of organic plant forms.</p><p>Kang Miro channels the flow of light and the texture of paint to visualize deep-seated emotions, giving them a tangible presence on the canvas.</p><p>Rich pigments collide with the physical traces of paint, creating a vivid viewing experience that feels as though one could literally touch a dream.</p><p>Meanwhile, Jin Pul’s meticulous lines and understated color palette capture the living vitality of everyday natural elements—grass, earth, and water—reminding us of the subtle wonders that often go unnoticed.</p><p>Together, these two artists expand our perception of what a “dream” can be. Kang Miro’s vibrant energy captivates with its warmth and intensity, while Jin Pul’s work quietly reflects the ever-shifting rhythms of nature. In Tangible Dreams, the convergence of these visual languages offers audiences a unique opportunity to explore the world of the unconscious and the subconscious as something physically accessible, evoking a sensation akin to actually holding a dream.</p><p><br></p>" />

Wang You</a> found her own way to it - fashioning a childhood hobby into a career as a professional painter. Wang You wasn’t an artist by training - going off-piste from the constructs of the profession but nonetheless painted relentlessly with the same attitude as Van Gogh who expressed, “I never cease to paint, because I paint in order to learn.” She too learns and creates as she paints. Unconfined by rules and conventions of academia, her work glows with freedom, boldness, and passion. She faces an empty canvas without fear and, in fact, sees it as her own built parallel universe - an intuitive space where she lets her imagination dribble away and mold an unrefined feeling. In Wang You’s own words - painting is her paradise.</p><p>The notion of “worldview” can be derived from the word “playground”. Wang You abandons the historical burden of the traditions of painting as a medium, nor does she weigh herself with political anxieties arising from issues surrounding cultural identity. From her lens, she views painting as animate, as an extension of life that transcends different ages and civilisations; allowing artists to genuinely respond to their symbiosis with the world. Wang You once shared some of her favourite artists who realmed far and wide in an interview: from early Renaissance fresco artists Benozzo Gozzoli and Paolo Uccelle, to murals from Dunhuang and those from Chinese funerary practices, then back to Delacroix, Manet, Van Gogh, Picasso, before naming Bruegel, El Greco, Shi Tao, Wang Xizhi, and on to contemporaries such as Peter Doig and Alice Neel. The apparent juxtaposition in time and geography in this chaos of a list was perhaps a result of spontaneous conversation, but is ultimately resolved if we place ourselves in the eyes of the painter. Wang You doesn’t see the History of Art or the histories of the civilisations as linear but rather traverses across and wanders in their domains in her own journey of exploration.&nbsp;</p><p>She pauses at Cézanne. Wang You finds herself in awe, struck with reverence as she notes at the impossibility of surpassing Cézanne’s work. She observes how her personality differs from Cézanne’s rationality, inadvertently assessing her sense of “self” and her character as she talks about painting. Wang You seemingly enjoys crafting her personal image, calling to mind the genre of “self-portraiture” -&nbsp; a cornerstone of painting. Though, as we position ourselves in today’s media-driven age, a spectacle perpetually generating faces in the facial society Thomas Macho speaks of, our obsession, if not thirst, of the image compels us to surrender private ownership of one’s face to the public domain. Alternatively, the “propagation of facial identities” is catalysing the frightening erosion of human personality, with the graphic image of the self increasingly becoming plastic and rendered to being a mere symbol. Though, what even is the “self”? Descartes, however “rational”, did not recognize that there would be an inherent relationship between one’s face and expression of the self. He claims “I had a face”, which was part of “the whole structure of bodily parts that corpses also have - I call it the body”. In this way, parallels could be drawn to the process of a painter’s “self-portraiture” as the conscious host is inevitably objectified - a mask.&nbsp;</p><p><br></p>" />