Exhibition location: KEPCO Art Center Gallery Exhibition Room

(1355 Seocho 2-dong, Seocho-gu, Seoul)     Tel   02-2015-8191

Date: 2012.11.14~11.20

<Author's Note> 

'A society that lives well' is ultimately a society in which many people live in harmony. It is a life that is achieved. Everyone has a desire to know the true nature of various human beings across time. The fact that no two people have the same unique faces and unique identities is one of the motivations for painters to paint portraits. Portrait works, including portraits, account for about 80% of Western art museums. Britain's National Portrait Gallery has 175,000 portraits since the 16th century, and the United States' National Portrait Gallery has 100,000 portraits over its 240-year history. This meaningful genre of portraits was enjoyed by our ancestors in the past and they also created great works, but the works in current collections have become rare. It is true that today there are few artists who enter this field with various media and materials. As we move toward an advanced society, I believe there will be a need to value the role and value of portraits more in the future. 

Pictures of Thought, 

Portraits In the West, many painters have enjoyed depicting great men. The figure of France's Joan of Arc, comparable to Korea's Yu Gwan-sun, was painted by several artists, including Gauguin, and dozens of works remain. Even painters on her British side at war with France painted her. Artists often draw self-portraits of themselves as well as of others. Rembrandt painted 90 self-portraits. At the end of his short life, Van Gogh painted 30 self-portraits solely for self-reflection and said, 

'Ah! A portrait, a portrait with thoughts, contains the spirit of the subject.

Ah! Portraiture, portraiture with the thought, the soul of the model in it'

He left behind many painful thoughts of life in his works. In this way, portraiture is an area of painting that expresses the spirit along with the human appearance. The portraits seen in many art museums are intended to promote the 'human spirit' 

According to Sir Joshua Reynolds, a famous British portrait artist, 'A room filled with paintings is a room filled with thoughts. He said, 

'A room hung with pictures is a room hung with thoughts.'

 Likewise, the pictorial arts such as portraits and landscapes are all works that evoke their own 'thoughts' in the viewer with 'thoughts'. Therefore, portrait works that contain human life and spirit can be said to be the most dense paintings. If a family line has a portrait of an ancestor, his or her descendants learn and know a lot through the work and are greatly influenced mentally. If we had a 'portrait museum', we would be able to discover the deep history of many of our ancestors and gain a good spiritual legacy. 

Attractive people look 

Portraits are usually painted on order, and there are cases where the artist himself paints public figures. Musicians want to express attractive people who make us proud and move us through songs, and painters want to express them through paintings. 

In 2010, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the death of Ahn Jung-geun, the works of 42 independence activists were produced after two years of work and were held at an invitation exhibition at the Ahn Memorial Hall. This year's tenth portrait exhibition features athlete Kim Yu-na, who impressed the entire nation at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, Dr. Park Byeong-seon, who discovered Jikji, the world's first movable metal type book, and who first opened the world of IT to all mankind just 25 years ago. I drew people like Steve Jobs, and they are just such people. 

The artist's attempt to leave behind works for those who have devoted themselves to the nation and humanity is considered to be an artist's spirit, or Engagement, which is a series of participation in reality that is in line with enlightenment activities on political and social issues. Artists around the world left many portraits and sculptures of Beethoven, who stroked and healed the human heart through music, and these works played a role in making his music shine along with his name. 

Last year, while participating in a portrait contest in Manhattan, New York, I had the opportunity to visit several art museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, for a few days. There were many scenes where visitors looked seriously in front of the portrait work, and this seemed to be an aspect of Western society showing that it is a society centered on humanism. 

We plan to continue this exhibition by depicting attractive and great people. I want to convey their scent through portraits that bring me excitement. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to those who provided me with warm interest, encouragement, and various assistance leading up to the portrait exhibition. 

Western painter Cho Young-gyu