For its opening exhibition, from March 5th to April 16th, the OKNP Seoul presents ‘Gleamy Languor’, the exclusive solo exhibition of artist Heewon Oh, renowned for her work using silver canvas. In this exhibition, the artist presents together the series of works from both ‘Dispersion: Blooming’ first presented in 2021, and ‘Dispersion: Erasing’.

Heewon Oh utilizes color pencil over silver canvas as a means of expressing invisible natural phenomena such as the flow of air and dispersal of light. Intrigued by the movement and properties of light and the world of meteorology, the artist studies the expression of these non-material, formless products in a pictorial fashion, and evokes a sense of floating and weightlessness through the repetition and variation of her drawings. Although the overlapping lines of color pencil fill out the layers of canvas in various forms, much like the title of the piece ‘Dispersion’ they also emerge and float above it. Like experiencing the weightlessness of light beaming through a glass window on a clear day, through the artist’s work, you can observe the moment when the spectrum of light changes through the interaction between the light reflecting above the silver and the light encompassed within the painting. Like a single ray of light penetrating through a window and diagonally landing across a wall, the artist’s ‘Erasing’ repeats the process of sharply disconnecting the trajectory of light on the screen with an eraser and then restoring this light once again sporadically.

<< Gleamy Languor>> encapsulates the beauty of the intangible that is both faintly dispersed and transparently erased. Like the sense of drowsiness and apathy which follows suit to a weightless experience, the pure, abstract world touches this blooming transparent lightness as it spawns across an indistinguishable stage.

“I’m someone who looks at and manipulates the space between reflection and refraction. Based on an aesthetic approach with regards to the imperfect, I connect the relationship between light and the surrounding atmosphere using optics and meteorological phenomena as vehicles for literary appreciation. Mainly dealing with flat-plane paintings, I visualize natural phenomena through this medium, with the intention of ascribing pictorial appearance to invisible formations like the atmosphere and dispersal of light. I’m working to project these transparent moments based on these perspectives onto the canvas.” – Artist’s notes.

Based in Seoul, Heewon Oh graduated with her bachelor’s degree from the department of painting at Hongik University and went on to complete a master’s at Seoul National University of Science and Technology. Examining the connectivity between atmosphere, light, transparency, clarity, and blur, she continues to metaphorically connect the relationship that embodies them over the surface of silver canvas. The intended interaction between light and the surrounding atmosphere forms the foundation for the perspective that freely projects transparent moments onto the canvas; and like a transparent climatic state, the object being viewed continues to strive towards an intangible, weightless form, lightly drifting within its own existence.