Since 2019, G Gallery has been running Great Exhibition, a program aiming to support up-and-coming Korean artists. In this year’s edition, Great Exhibition 2022: XXXX_XXX_XXXX_XX, selected artist Kim Sangso will be showcasing works that explore the fundamental concerns surrounding the medium of 'painting' through exploration and experimentation on the elements that compose it. Kim graduated from Hongik University's Department of Painting and is pursuing a master's degree in Fine Art at the Seoul National University of Science and Technology.

The exhibition is based on the contents of a specific novel. Maps depicting the locations where certain events in the novel occurred are available to visitors who are then invited to walk through the gallery and view the show much like one does in a computer role-playing game. In the gallery space, fragmented information about the story is presented through sound and murals as well as through paintings, and viewers are able to experience the physicality of the paintings by analyzing and weaving together different information. The artist materializes the fictional story of the novel into paintings, and through experiencing the materialized paintings viewers are guided back into the virtual space of the novel.

The changed environment within the visual arts community that artists encountered after the pandemic brought about a crisis in the existence of the medium of painting. Paintings have been de-materialized and displayed in online viewing rooms, and new types of images that deviate from the existing system are displayed and distributed in digital space. Facing a situation that seems to imply the end of painting, Kim Sangso reverses the experience of non-material painting provided by digital space and experiments with the opposite process. Through this, the artist asserts that the physical experience of material painting is a characteristic unique to painting only, which can never be replaced with the digital or virtual. To maximize the physical experience, the various elements such as murals, paintings, sounds, and maps are actively utilized, and through the complex relationships between these many factors, the senses are layered and enriched.

Kim regards painting as something more than just images mixed in a sea of photos and films, but a genre of rich history and distinct uniqueness which is a result of its status as an art that predates all others. ‘XXXX_XXXX_XXXX_XX’ reveals his concerns and thoughts regarding the inherent role that painting has and the future of the genre itself.