Korea

MinSoo Bhan

Korea

MinSoo Bhan

Artist Statement

My oeuvre is mostly composed of paintings and I employ subject matters of ‘human’, ‘space’, and the ‘meaning of the present and the past’. I contemplate the modern perception of the transforming value of the past that was once regarded with great honor by people in history, what are the essential values to the modern people, and how the purpose of human existence relates to such values.

I witnessed independent values in the nature of modern society from the scene of the crowds standing in a row for a single ‘value’. In 2017, I had a solo exhibition under the title of ‘A Drifting Faces’. Ever since my focus shifted to expressing the uneasiness alongside the subject matter of ‘Uncertain Minds’. Negative emotions of uncertainty, insecurity, and dissatisfaction are initially aroused as intimate feelings of which spread to the surroundings to reach the society. I draw a face expressing the flow of water and an uncertain process. And I paint faces with the theme of 'the uncertain mind', and explores human nature and insecurities.

Precious Time

In the auction hall hangs Salvador Dalí’s The Persistence of Memory. Yet here, Dalí’s iconic melting clocks are replaced with golden Rolex watches. What does the saying ‘time is money’ mean to us today? While time signifies the irretrievable flow of disappearance, for consumers, this truth is transformed into the notion of ‘owning precious time’, and even time itself becomes a commodity.

Fresh Remembers

We recognize one another and exchange emotions through the face. Yet in an age of rampant consumption of image, the face no longer conveys fixed identity or essence but exists as a fragmented, deconstructed image. Deconstruction as a philosophical perspective questions the illusion of essence and breaks fixed meanings. Francis Bacon’s distorted faces and bodies visualize fragmented identities and dismantled remnants of the self. Just as we cannot see the full form of an animal in a piece of meat, flesh is no longer linked to emotion or life but becomes something consumed. Are we not consuming one another’s faces and beings the way we consume meat? This painting contains such questions, presenting portraits of the deconstructed essence.

Resurrection

In July 2024, a perfectly preserved Stegosaurus fossil named Apex was sold at Sotheby’s New York for approximately $44.6 million, setting a new record for the highest auction price ever paid for a dinosaur fossil. The fact that something long dead can, after millions of years, be given new value again makes me think — isn’t this, in its own way, a form of resurrection?