SEO HANEUL: LAYERS OF LIGHT

MISOOL GALLERY presents Layers of Light, a solo exhibition by Seo Haneul. For the past three years the artist has watched the light of Seoul at dawn and dusk from the same window, recording its changes not as named colours but as shifts in temperature and density. The exhibition is the first to show in full how that record slowly becomes painting. Seo's canvases are built from thinned oil paint applied, dried and applied again dozens of times. A single layer is almost invisible, yet as the layers accumulate the horizon begins to tremble and small openings appear between fields of colour, through which light seems to seep. For the artist, painting is not a way of depicting a landscape but of leaving on the surface the thickness of the hours that have passed over it. The exhibition brings together twelve new paintings and a series of drawings made over the same period. On the ground floor, long horizontal canvases hang in a single line at eye level, joining into one extended horizon. Upstairs, pencil and watercolour drawings that note the movement of light are laid out like pages from a working journal. In the afternoon, when daylight enters the rooms, the colours of the paintings shift visibly. Layers of Light asks visitors to stay a little longer in front of each work. When a surface that first appeared monochrome opens, after a few minutes, into many layers of light, we experience in our own bodies how remembered landscapes fade and return.