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GALLERY MAC
The Contemporary Art Gallery since 2007 in Busan, S.Korea
  • Current Exhibition, Jeong-A Bang Solo Exhibition 《Water and Fire Alike》

    Current Exhibition

    Jeong-A Bang Solo Exhibition 《Water and Fire Alike》 20 September - 1 November 2025
    “Water is fine, and fire is fine. Does this mean both this and that are acceptable?”The opening line of Jeong-A Bang’s artist note for her solo exhibition Water and Fire Alike reveals the artist’s gaze at life, found at the point where opposing properties collide and intermingle. It is not a gesture of simple inclusivity, but a critical question directed at the reality we face today.

    Issues such as power relations between nations, unjust social structures, women’s rights and human dignity, the climate crisis and environmental degradation, and nuclear power are deeply entangled with individual lives while simultaneously confronting us as irresolvable contradictions. In situations where no single choice is possible, how should we live, and what role can art play? Water and Fire Alike  begins with this question.
     
    Alongside paintings on canvas, this exhibition also presents Bang’s experimental works. Large-scale pieces made from dismantled cotton quilt linings, and works painted on traditional hanbokfabric, transform personal memory and material layers into new surfaces. These works extend Bang’s longstanding realist perspective and social critique, while proposing another possibility for painting beyond the conventional rectangular frame.

    Ultimately, Water and Fire Alike  illuminates our condition in a world that forces choices upon us, where we nevertheless feel compelled to “do something.” To embrace both water and fire, conflict and contradiction alike, is to reveal the uneasy reality of coexistence. Here, art becomes a question that cuts through a fragmented and chaotic world. Jeong-A Bang’s work invites viewers to weave together these scattered fragments and to reflect anew on their own lives and society.

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