Artist, lives and works in Hoi-An, Vietnam

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Freelance cameraman/painter, lives and works in Bangalore, India

The endeavour in these works is to portray the clear life style of Baiga tribe through a 19th century printing technique i.e. Gum bichromate process.

Gum bichromate process
This process is based upon the discovery that the potassium bichromate with a colloid (gum Arabic) and a water-soluble pigment forms a light sensitive emulsion that can be brushed onto a paper substratum (or on any suitable surface), exposed through a negative to sun light, and developed in plain water. Where light strikes, the emulsion hardens and remains. Unexposed areas do not harden, and so during development they are washed off, and only the hardened image remains on the surface, after a series of delicate water washes.

These Gum bichromate prints are the result of the preliminary study undertaken during the course of research for a documentary on Baiga in Chattisgarh, India.

Baiga
The Baigas are the second largest group of indigenous people in Chattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh. They have lived in the forest areas of khana (‘Dandakaranya’ of the great epic Ramayana), the districts of Mandla, Balaghat, Bilaspur and Rajnandgaon since immemorial.time. According to local legends the very first Baiga was born to the Mother goddess on the Hill of Elephants and was named ‘Nanga Baiga’. Since then they have always been referred to as 'Sons and Daughters of Mother Earth'.

The Baigas are gentle and peaceful tribes who have mostly preferred to retreat to remote and sometimes rather inhospitable terranes, rather than being engulfed with modern ways of life. [...]

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Artist, lives and works in Seoul, South Korea

… ”The super-realistic characteristics also appear in the works of Jeong Il Oh who adopted very traditional painting languages. Most of his topics are the hairs on the whole body. In his works, hairs are shown as one part of the body; sometimes hairs even get rid of the restriction of the body, becoming the main part of the pictures independently. All the pictures have dark black backgrounds; with hairs painted by small sized brush pens bestrewing the whole picture. The unknown hair-like objects shown on the dark background deliver a feeling of nervousness. Through our eyes, this feeling is not only restricted to our mentality, but also to our body. It's like opening every pore on the body, anxiously waiting for some uncertain inspiration to come. The classic techniques and non-realistic subjects are a reminder of the relationship between paintings by Jeong Il Oh and super-realistic artists such as Magrate. However, there is an obvious difference between the physical experience shown by the works and the psychological experience of super-realism, the former of which seemingly having more experience and energy of modern society...”
Written by Pi Li – In the “Painting is just painting” (introduction for the exhibition ’Brush hour’)

“Stylistically, the art of Oh Jeong-Il is marked by an unprecedented combination of hyper-real precision of detail with comprehensive, coherent composition, and a palette that is morbidly obsessive with the thinnest part of the human body; hair. In his painting the image is made up of minute monochrome lines, so that the viewer’s attention fluctuates between the surface pattern and the overall picture, which can only be read from a distance. Its impressive over-size scale has a visual power, which pulls the viewer deeply into its melancholic depths, hair being the thinnest part of verifying our identity. However, our identity is as trivial as a hair in this gigantic society. The artist raises the question of value as an individual and a human being.”

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Painter, lives and works in Go Yang Si, South Korea

Artist, lives and works in Dijon, FR

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Painter, lives and works in Tokyo, Japan

Artist, lives and works in San Francisco, USA

Self No Self

The Andrew Bae Gallery is pleased to present new paintings in the Self No Self series by San Francisco Bay Area artist Sandra Sunnyo Lee. The Self No Self series, begun in the mid-1990, is an outgrowth of the Korean-born painter’s study of Zen Buddhism. Lee paints with the intention: «to demonstrate self-awareness in the peaceful face, and to try to give those who view (her) paintings the feeling of equanimity and calm.» Her work, the artist says, «is about meditation, and the transformation of the self beyond the self.» The primary subject matter in Lee’s paintings has been one face in meditation. She sometimes multiplies that solo face, often in triptychs, with very slight variations, or, in the Momentum series, on one canvas, when one face is painted repeatedly, like a blur, as one might paint a runner in motion. The faces often share characteristics that can read as sensual, like full lips, shapely, well-defined facial contours, and softly closed eyes. Recently Lee has begun to join two faces side by side, with one flipped upside-down. Called Yes or No and Yin and Yang, one face is matched in opposition to another. This is self + self, or more appropriately, beautiful as a concept but awkward in words: Self No Self + Self No Self.

Many of Sandra Lee’s newest works show the face with more realistic human characteristics. No longer do we see an iconic, dreamy, faded image; instead Lee is interested in portraying «regular people» achieving a state of being similar to that which Lee first achieved through sitting Zazen, Zen Buddhist Meditation. In her November-December show, Lee will also introduce paintings that include the body, rendered with the same kind of attention to spirit as we see in her «face paintings».

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Painter, lives and works in New York, NY, USA

[...] What is it that makes your work significant? (No modesty please: If you had to boast, what would you say?)

Here are the lists of things/facts that what I think make my work significant.

My paintings represent both East and West. These two cultures are mixed and reinterpreted in my works. They make a significant and unique presentation of my paintings in the art world.

My paintings are created with an honest intention. I don’t lie to my painting or to myself when I paint. I follow my intuition. My paintings carry out this well, with its images.

My paintings are shown at major art fairs and galleries, and the works are received very well. The fact that my works are active in one of the most cultural cities, New York, is very important. [...]

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Video artist/photographer/painter, lives and works in Nagoya, Japan

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Artist, 1973 born in Hyogo prefecture, lives in Kyoto, Japan

Half A Paradise

In the world depicted by Aoki Ryoko, a definite subject very often does not exist. An image that is hard to make out unfolds in front of the eyes. The motives painted on panels are all concrete images, such as plants, trees, falters, leaves, animals, or human figures. However, when she lays them in her pictures, each image is elaborately woven into a unique realm, where the charm and sweetness of a fairytale scene coexists with an obscure eeriness.

[...] Just as fairy tales often bear an underlying cruelty, the works of Aoki may at first glance seem to be innocent and light-hearted, but her pessimistic view of the real world can be glimpsed beneath the surface. The greatest characteristics of Aoki’s world of is that rather than dreaming of an ideal world that will never come true, she continues her artistic work in the spaces located between the fragments of reality and imagination. She creates a microcosm by expressing her love and hatred towards the world using humour and imagination.

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