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photo: © Koh Sang Woo - Empire Road, 2022
With the exhibition Wild in Blue Wanrooij Gallery in Amsterdam shows a selection of colorful photographic paintings by the Korean-American visual artist Koh Sang Woo. The lively portraits of wild animals, with human characteristics, prominently use the color blue with a subtle pink heart.
Koh Sang Woo is internationally known for both his blue-toned photography and his Blue Endangered Animals series in his characteristic style. For the recent series of endangered species, including pandas, tigers, bears and elephants, he combines photography with digital painting.
The artist is inspired by, among others, the work of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Andy Warhol.
As in traditional art, the animals are portrayed frontally; to communicate with them and grant them authority. Their confident expressions convey character, personality and emotion, just as human portraits do. The portraits are characterized by bilateral symmetry and a sense of static stability and unity.
Koh Sang Woo's artistic message is that wild animals are equal to humans and therefore deserve respect; he envisions a society in which people and animals coexist.
Koh Sang Woo (1978) lives and works in New York and Seoul. He trained in photography and performance art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). The artist exhibits worldwide. His autonomous work has been presented at leading art fairs such as The Armory Show in New York, Art Basel in Hong Kong, Art Miami, KunstRAI in Amsterdam and SCOPE Basel and is included in the collections of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art and the Savina Museum in Korea.
His extensive body of work was brought together in the 2021 monograph Koh Sang Woo 20 Years.
Koh Sang Woo – Wild in Blue
October 21 to January 31, 2023
Wanrooy Gallery
