YUGEN Gallery will hold a group exhibition "Freestyle Asians" by six artists from four Asian countries from Saturday, January 14th to Thursday, January 19th, 2023.

Tracing the roots and crossing the border street

The street culture that has emerged since the 1990s has presented an alternative way of looking at the world, using everyday life as a theme. CYH Jason Colonel King, who is considered the most important figure in Taiwan's graffiti art scene, said, "Ideas are born from random daily news, everything around me," adding noise to everyday events. In Street Art, he traces back to the roots of Taiwanese people and creates works on the theme of national character, sex, and religion. Since he himself suffered from irritable bowel syndrome, he regards lesions as creations and calls himself "King of the Large Intestine" as an artist.

Wasin Paisak Hamas attempts to approach the pre-civilization world developed by humans in the magnetism of the street, a place where diverse values ​​come and go. By drawing strange characters in semi-fluorescent colors on black-and-white photographs of Buddha statues, he expresses the connection between old and new cultures. While producing such works, he launched the art project ``AT Exchange'' in his hometown Ban Pong, a city in western Thailand, inviting various artists such as photography, painting, and graffiti from all over the world and presiding over an art festival. Over the course of about two months, works will be exhibited and live performances will be held in various locations in areas where old customs remain, bringing to light the customs and history rooted in the land and questioning their relationship with the present.

New values ​​created by noise

Both artists use noise to unravel the genealogy from their roots to the present, and attempt to depict the landscape of the future.

Jinru expresses memories and fluctuations in the world with noise. “The world of colors that I perceive is constantly changing and moving,” he says. The imperfection of memory is depicted in works that "leave incomplete traces" such as rough sketches and noisy colors, and the values ​​that we rely on and the world are fictional. This questioning of current values ​​has something in common with Ichirin.

Cultures, races, and eras intersect with incompatible styles, and memories and experiences are spun while fluctuating. The identity that emerges in it gives us a sense of a new landscape.

WOK22's graffiti works, which use natural motifs such as waves and clouds, and develop a cute yet frightening Ukiyo-e-like world view, have a fear of the other world and a curiosity that counterbalances it. It is shown. Since then, he has recently sublimated the subject matter into simple patterns, creating works based on the theme of beings that are free to come and go in space and interact with each other.

The theme of Montemis, which develops graffiti art based on traditional Thai techniques such as lacquer and watermark painting, is "life and Buddhism." Draw an image reminiscent of a picture of hell with a dynamic touch, as if saying, "I'm interested in hell." From the Buddhist cosmology, which captures the world in a dualistic structure of a world of hesitation and worldly desires, and the so-called paradise of paradise freed from it, I try to reveal a new realm of values.

Asia foretells the beginning

Six artists from Asia, whose medium is the street where strangers come and go and where bare values ​​are strewn about, will meet in Shibuya, Tokyo, carrying their own roots. It is a collection that strongly suggests that the place of “beginning” where new global values ​​are born is the streets of Asia.