Garden and Two Men, 2021, Oil and Pencil on canvas, 27.4 X 22,2 cm., Photo: Chunho An, Courtesy of the artist and Kukje Gallery. Image provided by Kukje Gallery.

Kukje Gallery is presenting a solo exhibition of Sungsic Moon, 《Life》 at the gallery's Busan branch, through February 28th 2022.

He produces works that represents landscape occupied by what he refers to as "us, here, now". To create this work, he carves directly into the impasto surface, which captures intensity and depth, focusing on the minutest detail. He observes the scenes of daily life and the plant and animal lives around his home and turning them into a permanent record. "Life" also includes new works from his series of large-scale rose paintings title Just Life, and 10 drawings from his A Mediocre Landscape. His interest in mundanity can be found in the artist's depiction of various plant species such as the weeping cherry tree, lily, plum blossom, magnolia, pear tree, pomegranate tree, and quince tree.

The main medium of his work is the pencil, as he once states, "Pencils are the most basic materials in painting, spontaneous and simple. I think resembles my unexaggerated and unpretentious personality. Painting resembles the artist's nature. The charm of a pencil as an artistic medium is that it shows the command of consciousness through the medium of the hand in an honest manner without any distortion." Most of his works in this exhibition are oil drawings, produced by scratching the think oil paint surface with a pencil.

Sungsic Moon was born in 1980 in Gimcheon, Gyeongsang province, and received his BFA and MFA at the Korea National University of Arts. His participation as the youngest artist to exhibit at the Korean Pavilion in the Venice Biennale in 2005 was widely celebrated. Moon has held solo exhibitions in numerous galleries and public institutions, including Beautiful. Strange. Dirty. (2019) and Landscape Portrait (2011) at Kukje Gallery, Seoul; Uncanny World at DOOSAN Gallery, Seoul (2016); and Windless Landscape at Kimi Art Gallery, Seoul (2006). He has participated in various group shows including The Middle Land: When Time Unfolds into a Land at ARKO Art Center, Seoul (2021); In Bloom at HITE Collection, Seoul (2021); Expression of Landscape at Daegu Art Museum, Daegu (2017); B-Cut Drawing at Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul (2017); Serrone at Biennale Giovani Monza, Monza (2011); A Different Similarity at Bochum Museum, Bochum (2010); Expanded Painting at Prague Biennale, Prague (2009); and On Painting at Kukje Gallery, Seoul (2007), among many others. His works are housed in the collections of Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul; DOOSAN ART CENTER, Seoul; HITE Collection, Seoul; and Seoul Olympic Museum of Art, Seoul.