이상원

Education

1992    Print Academy Templlier de la Villedieu, Ellancourt, France
1984    Graduated from Seoul National University Graduate School of Fine Arts, Department of Western Painting 
1980    Graduated from Seoul National University, Department of Painting

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Selected Solo Exhibitions
2021    Shinpung Museum of Art, Yecheon
2021    Insa Art Plaza Gallery, Seoul
2020    Gallery Choi, Seoul
2017    Gallery Min, Pangyo
2012    Gasan Gallery, Bundang
2008    Mokin Gallery, Seoul
2005    Horizon Gallery, Yokohama
             Bangje Gallery, Anyang
             Geumsan Gallery, Seoul
2002    Imok Gallery, Seoul
2001    Asian Live Gallery, Seoul
2000    Renee Gallery, Seoul
             Samsung Gallery, Bundang
1994    Ikon Gallery, Seoul
1993    Lee Mok Hwarang, Seoul
1992    Galerie CEDRE, Elancourt, France
1990    3rd Gallery, Seoul

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Selected Group Exhibitions
2018    My Little Garden, Gallery 32, Seoul
2017    Modern Art Exhibition, Seongnam Art Center, Bundang
2016    Seoul Open Art Fair, COEX, Seoul

Artist's Note

 All my memories remain as images. When I look at the changing, disappearing, and vanishing world from a moderate distance, it is sometimes cold, sometimes warm, sometimes dazzling. The things that didn't always stay, but flowed, were beautiful in their transience. The light that shone through things on the morning I woke up from nothingness was beautiful, as were the memories of petals that had a short and dazzling life, of flowers that bloomed in secret.
The memory of the world as a metaphor and symbol becomes a transparent and deep well from which to draw images. My painting is nothing more than a process of looking at the fragments of death in that deep well and loving them for their beauty, and thus becoming still.
It is about condensing into silence the stories of flowers and fruits that have gone through the winds and seasons. The image of a flower or landscape is a tool of metaphor and symbolism for memories that have seeped into me and are imprinted like fossils, but it is also a secret place to say what precedes language, and a lens to show the unseen.
I look at the world intuitively rather than rationally, and hope that the language of color, imbued with emotion and lyricism, will reach others like a scent or an echo.