JEONGSU WOO | PALINDROME

 

In Palindrome, his first solo exhibition at BB&M, Jeongsu Woo presents paintings revolving around the trope of Narcissus to examine contemporary society’s obsession with the self. As suggested by the exhibition title — referring to a word or phrase that reads identically backwards and forwards in a closed, reflective circuit — these works draw an analogy between the tragic condition of Narcissus, the submersion in illusory images of the self, and the self-reflexive, self-obsessive tendencies in our culture today. Among the most closely watched young Korean painters working today, Jeongsu Woo continues to mine motifs and signifiers from various temporal and cultural strata — from historical paintings to illustrated literary texts — to deploy them in a distinctly contemporary way.