2017 Soonja Han

Galleria Il Ponte concludes the exhibition season with a solo show dedicated to Korean Soonja Han, a global artist known for her vibrant abstract painting, sculptures and installations. Eight paintings, seven sculptures, six works on paper and one digital animation are shown.
This exhibition represents Han’s challenge conventional understandings of place. To Han, the space is understood as a physical reality, but in the process of visualizing it as a work of art, it becomes something beyond physical space. Han combines or separates the work of art and the space it inhabits along different dimensions.

In this exhibition Han takes Florence as an image and a millennial space and looks at it from a distinct perspective. She makes a connection between the light pouring through the oculus of the Pantheon and the effect of light on her bent semicircular aluminum forms.

Beyond portraying overlooked cultural narratives in the urban environment, Han explores the interrelated concepts of form, color, and light in her circular paintings, installations, and drawings. In recent years, Han has been working with the medium of digital animation, which is also featured in the current exhibition. Her brilliant circular forms address specific abstract ideas and ultimately cast our notion of Florence in a new light.

The circle is the visual center of Han’s work, but the theme of her work is also the context in which they are seen, envisioned, and experienced as form. Her simplified circular symbol is the content of the work. It represents an inner world that she wants to express. Moreover, it a way to facilitate transformations into art. What she seeks is a thorough sense of freedom. Han refuses to bind her creativity to any notion of ideology. Her art faithfully fulfills her willingness to break through traditional sources and to create her own world.