Hankyoreh / Roh Hyung-suk

 

 

Works of lesser-known overseas masters of contemporary art hit Seoul art scene
 

 

The first Korean solo exhibition by Rick Prol, "Cracked Window," features paintings that will take visitors back to New York of decades past. (Roh Hyung-suk/The Hankyoreh)
 

 

Just in time for spring, art exhibitions are blooming in the museums and galleries of Bukchon and Seochon, two neighborhoods at the center of Seoul's art scene.

 

What's distinctive about this spring's batch of exhibitions is their focus on lesser-known overseas masters of contemporary art.

 

The first exhibition to catch my eye is the first Korean solo exhibition by Rick Prol, a major figure in New York's art scene in the 1980s. Held at Leeahn Gallery, in Seochon (Changseong-dong), under the title "Cracked Window" through April 24, this exhibition features paintings that will take visitors back to New York of decades past.

 

Prol spent time in the East Village, in the New York slums, with Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, hugely influential artists who died at an early age. He took an expressionist approach to depict the urban landscape of the time, with its pervasive poverty and crime.

 

Prol depicts stumbling figures with heads chopped off and knives jutting out, buildings on fire, and desolate streets in sharp and sharp-tempered lines. The self-destructive humans on Prol's canvases are boxed in broken window frames that he collected on jaunts through the city streets, in an exquisite presentation of the decadent atmosphere in New York of the time.

 

 

 

http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_entertainment/991445.html