ARARIO GALLERY is pleased to participate in KIAF SEOUL 2026, held at COEX in Seoul from September 2 (Wed) to 6 (Sun), 2026. Our booth will present works by 11 Korean artists: AN Gyungsu (b. 1975, Korea), CHA Hyeonwook (b. 1987, Korea), KANG Cheolgyu (b. 1990, Korea), KOO Jiyoon (b. 1982, Korea), LEE Eunsil (b. 1983, Korea), LEE Jihyun (b. 1979, Korea), LIM Nosik (b. 1989, Korea), LIM Subeom (b. 1997, Korea), NOH Sangho (b. 1986, Korea), SIM Raejung (b. 1983, Korea), and WON Seoung Won (b. 1972, Korea). Working primarily through two-dimensional media—including Western painting, East Asian painting, and photography—these artists continue to expand the expressive possibilities of their respective practices. In an age saturated by digital screens, the tactile sensibility conveyed through the surfaces of analog artworks resonates with renewed significance.

Bringing together artists born between the 1970s and the 1990s, our booth (A05) presents a diverse range of formal perspectives through which contemporary realities are observed and reimagined. While inheriting the traditions of their respective mediums, the participating artists have continually developed distinctive artistic languages through experimental approaches rather than remaining confined by convention. The presentation first examines experimental approaches to painting and photography that blur the boundaries between the digital and the analog. NOH Sangho presents a series of paintings that reinterpret AI-generated images through the medium of hand-painted canvases, collecting and recombining digital imagery into analog form. WON Seoung Won constructs expansive narrative landscapes where reality and imagination intersect through meticulous digital collage, whose carefully edited and composited images paradoxically evoke a deeply analog sensibility.

The booth also highlights painterly investigations into urban environments, place, and spatial memory. LIM Nosik unfolds narratives of place and relationships, depicting the continuous coexistence of local communities, nature, and human life through dreamlike and delicately rendered landscapes. KOO Jiyoon transforms the anxiety and emptiness embedded within aging architecture and the temporality of cities into abstract compositions of entangled colors and lines, while AN Gyungsu patiently reconstructs the shifting and fluid sense of place through depictions of piles, debris, and byproducts displaced to the margins of the urban landscape. Also featured are artists who have developed distinctive pictorial languages grounded in the techniques and materials of traditional Korean painting. LEE Eunsil employs the techniques of Korean ink painting to metaphorically visualize psychological conflict and emotional turbulence arising from the tension between desire and social norms. CHA Hyeonwook explores the boundaries between contemporary landscape and memory through repeated dry brushstrokes and traditional pigments on hanji (Korean traditional paper), creating landscapes where fragments of memory gradually accumulate like sediment.

The exhibition further foregrounds works that imaginatively construct the inner landscape of the human psyche. KANG Cheolgyu captures psychological conflict and existential instability through the concept of “projection,” translating personal experiences and desires into fictional worlds where the self is continuously displaced and reconstructed. SIM Raejung dissects instinctive human emotions—including loneliness, anxiety, and powerlessness—as well as bodily impulses through a cynical yet rhythmically dynamic visual language. LEE Jihyun visualizes the associative workings of memory by superimposing memories from disparate times and spaces onto the pictorial plane. LIM Subeom summons undefined beings and unknown worlds that exist beyond the limits of human perception, constructing organic networks through richly layered iconography and imaginative forms.

Venue
Booth A05, Hall A&B, COEX, Seoul

Artists
AN Gyungsu, CHA Hyeonwook, KANG Cheolgyu, KOO Jiyoon, LEE Eunsil, LEE Jihyun, LIM Nosik, LIM Subeom, NOH Sangho, SIM Raejung, WON Seoung Won

Exhibition Dates
September 2 – 6, 2026

Website
https://www.arariogallery.com

Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/arariogallery_official/

Contact
LEE Youngshin, Sales Manager, M. +82 10 4943 0797 / E. youngshin.lee@arariogallery.com
KANG Sojung, Executive Director, M. +82 10 9256 1491 / E. sojung.kang@arariogallery.com

(Text and images courtesy of ARARIO GALLERY)