▲ Lamesis 7, Archival pigment print on matte canvas, 67x100cm, 2023 ⓒ  CHANGNAM

Korean photographer CHANGNAM(창남) Holds her solo exhibition, 'LAmesis' at Gallery NoW in Seoul.

The artist is a leading photographer from South Korea who shows her inner self-projecting works through the sea. In the exhibition, she reveals more than 25 works, including the 'The Sea' series, which depicts real landscapes, and new works, 'Lamesis', which shows conceptual landscapes.

▲ Lamesis 3, Archival pigment print on matte canvas, 72x53.6, 2023 ⓒ  CHANGNAM

The exhibition name 'Lamesis' is a word intentionally created by the artist by mixing the French word 'La Mer', which means sea, and 'La mimeèsis', which means imitation from ancient Greek. This is a fictional word that does not exist in the dictionary, but it means image and text. In other words, the image of 'the sea' and the text it refers to are linked in her work.

In the exhibition, the artist showcases photographic works that create a landscape similar to the sea using chiffon, pastel colors, and space. She inherited and transformed the previous series of works, "The Sea," which captured the sea with fantastic color images through delicate productions such as inserting filters and adjusting exposure values at the scene.

▲ Desire #43, Archival pigment print on matte canvas, 70x47cm, 2019 ⓒ  CHANGNAM

The artist hangs a thin, soft chiffon to the floor, installs a series of previously presented works from the back of the fabric, transmits light with lighting, and extracts colors and images from the existing works. Afterward, sand is laid on the floor and starfish, clams, conch shells, and bird feathers are placed to create a landscape of the sea, and then this is photographed again.

She then calls the picture taken through the 'making photo' process from a computer to a digital file and completes it through fine follow-up and printing steps. Through these working processes, she brings the scenery of the sea to the studio, converts it into a still life, and appropriates it as if she were directing a theater stage.

▲ Desire #7, Archival pigment print on matte canvas, 70x47cm, 2019 ⓒ  CHANGNAM

The scenery of the sea photographed inside the studio is fake, but it effectively represents the 'ideal landscape from outside to the inside' that the artist wants to express. The landscape of the sea in her work goes through a creative change from the notion of reality to non-realness and from a landscape containing each individual's value to a calm still-life.

She regards the sea as an imperfect image that has visual similarity without completely deviating from the object. Rather than inducing misunderstanding by emphasizing similarity and similarity, she created a work to recreate the ideological landscape that came from outside. Therefore, she intentionally creates an expanded non-realistic landscape based on memories and recollections of the sea.

▲ Lamesis 4, Archival pigment print on matte canvas, 72x48cm, 2023 ⓒ  CHANGNAMThe artist reminds us that each human individual has different experiences and memories of the sea. Through her special feelings and memories of the sea, She wants to see the sea anew. For her, the sea is a time and space to focus on the self, a space to escape from anxiety in reality, and a place where you can freely express your inner feelings.

CHANGNAM's solo exhibition "LAmesis," which allows the audience to think about your inner self through the image of the sea, will be held at Gallery NoW in Gangnam-gu, Seoul until the 26th.▲ The poster of the exhibition ⓒ Gallery NoW

Sayart / Nao Yim, yimnao@naver.com