Plastic fragments under willow tree

On occasion of Open Art, the gallery is showing works on paper and bronzes by Jonghoon Im in a solo show for the first time. Born in Cheonan (South Korea) in 1988, the artist studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich with Prof. Eva Grubinger as well as painting and graphics with Prof. Jorinde Voigt, with whom he graduated as a master student in 2019.
Jonghoon Im captivates the viewer with contrasting colors, subtle coloristic nuances and complex calligraphic textures. Against the background of cloudy color fields blurring into each other, a complex cosmos of organic forms appears. His aim is to visualise opposing abstract concepts, to make visible pairs of terms such as ‘desire and taboo’, ‘becoming and passing away’ or ‘hollow and spiritual’. Recurring pictorial elements such as the deer antler, the willow tree, the thistle or the spider lily refer to Western and Asian symbolic worlds and are woven into hybrid forms in the multi-layered drawings.
The fusion of opposing elements takes place not only in terms of content, but also during the working process with acrylic ink on paper, in which random colour gradients form the starting point for further forms, which are created using meticulous stencil techniques. From intuition and construction, Jonghoon Im develops a hybrid language of forms, which is also evident in his sculptural works.