HRD FINE ART

Introduction

HRD Fine Art is pleased to announce the opening of a group exhibition titled "Gold Experience 3: Metallusion / Gold Leaf Paintings from Korea and Japan - Kuramaguchi Edition," on view from May 11 through July 6, 2024. This exhibition will feature eight artists; four from Korea and four from Japan.

HRD Fine Art has organized two exhibitions under the title "Gold Experience," first in Seoul, Korea in 2010 and then in Aichi in 2012. After over a decade, this upcoming exhibition titled "Gold Experience 3: Metallusion" is a newest edition of the exhibition series focusing on paintings from Korea and Japan that make use of gold leaf or other metal leaf as painting material.

Exhibiting artists are: Hyunjoo Park, Junduk Song, Miyeon Lee, and Bona Koo from Korea; and Noriyori Shirakawa, Masako Yasuki, Ryoko Kimura, and Natsumi Nanashino from Japan.

In art history both in the West and the East, the use of gold leaf in painting has a long and rich tradition. For example, Christian icons painted with tempera and mosaic murals in Europe; paper screens and fan-shaped paintings in East Asia. Though having seen separate development and evolution in terms of religious, metaphorical and aesthetical meaning and function, as well as technical and methodical difference, there have been several crossovers in the course of history, such as Christian evangelists taking their glittering holy icons to Asian countries to impress the populace, and in turn, in 19th century, Japonisme boom in Europe saw a lot of artworks imported from Japan including gold-grounded screens and sliding-door paintings.

Though often regarded merely as painting’s background, the use of gold leaf has been assigned with far more important roles both in the West and the East; to awe the viewer with religious sublimity; to exhibit imposing power and wealth of the owner of the painting; or to present infinite depth in the two-dimensional picture space.

This exhibition invites the audience to look into the past history and the future of painting through a variety of techniques and expressions with gold and metal leaf, while at the same time inspiring cultural exchange between Japan and Korea through contemporary art.

The subtitle of the exhibition, "Metallusion," is a coined word combining "metal" and "illusion," "allusion," and "fusion," but it also relates to "metaphor" and "meta," indicating multiple layers that a gold/metal leaf painting connotes.