Arario Gallery Shanghai is pleased to announce the solo exhibition THE GREAT CHAPBOOK by Korean artist Noh Sangho from 30 June to 9 September 2023, featuring the artist's exhibition's eponymous series THE GREAT CHAPBOOK, as well as new works from the HOLY a new series of works.
In this age of imagery, with the proliferation of various social media, sharing snippets of life on virtual networks or reading digital images has become a very common way of quickly understanding and participating in the world. This way of socialising, living and consuming is the starting point and the underlying logic of his work - to explore the production of images and their consumption by the masses in modern society. The contemporary nature of his work is undeniable, as he browses the internet and social media on a daily basis, collecting images and using his signature creative language to document the contemporary aspects of popular culture and social networking.
His series, THE GREAT CHAPBOOK, is filled with a variety of characters and cartoons based on fragments of images from the internet. Stylishly dressed or grotesquely costumed, they seem to be travellers from another time and place, performing a specific act in their respective locations. The series is like a storybook made up of a myriad of images and scenes, but does not conform to the logic of a linear narrative. When the viewer turns the pure act of looking into a journey of discovery, allowing the imagination to roam through the paintings and connect seemingly unrelated intentions, the fragmented images may become a story.
The "HOLY" series continues to reflect Lu Sang-ho's observations on the production and consumption of images in both the digital virtual world and the real world. The virtual digital images originate from reality and their creators and users exist in reality, but the public has different ways of consuming and holding different attitudes towards images of different origins. In the creation of the 'HOLY' series, the artist uses artificial intelligence-driven digital imaging technology to generate new virtual images from collected fragments of uncopyrighted images, with a variety of unexpected outcomes, and then transforms the technically generated products into real-world paintings, allowing these images to exist in both the virtual and the real.
It is worth noting that in his work, Lo uses carbon paper, which is usually sandwiched between two pages of paper, as a medium for reproducing text or images. The artist uses the reproducibility of carbon paper as a metaphor for the vast amount of images in the virtual digital world that are copied, pasted, transported and distributed countless times on different platforms.
In order to give the viewer a glimpse into the fleeting nature of trendy culture, Lo Sang-ho creates a small painting based on an online image almost every day, which he then shares and uploads on his Instagram page. "The core of my work revolves around the images (IMAGES) that pop up on the internet every day, which I input quickly and process again in various ways to output here." In this way, the images shift back and forth between the virtual digital world and the real world.
The "daily drawing" series, which has been created by Lou Sang-ho over the past year, will also be on display in this exhibition, with the artist's unique approach to displaying his paintings on hangers like fashion --The artist's unique presentation - the paintings are displayed on hangers like fashion - is a visual representation of the public's consumption of images.
Based on the underlying logic of "production and consumption of images", Lu has successfully collaborated with commercial brands, designing prints for clothing brands and record covers for famous bands, combining art and commerce in his practice. "This is the way the world is consuming images now."
