[GALLERY MAC] Jeong-A Bang Solo Exhibition 《Water and Fire Alike》 INVITATION !!

방정아 작가 개인전 《물불 안가리는 사람》이 부산 맥화랑에서 9월 20일부터 개최됩니다.

2025. 9. 17.

Jeong-A Bang Solo Exhibition

《Water and Fire Alike》

2025. 09. 20(sat) - 11. 01(sat)

AM 10:30 - PM 06:30 (sun, mon off)

📌Artist Talk:

2025. 09. 20(sat) 15:00 @GALLERY_MAC

Address│2F, 162 Dalmaji-gil 117beonna-gil, Haeundae-gu, Busan, S.Korea

Inquiry│info@gallerymac.org

Online Viewing Room

From September 20 to November 1, Gallery MAC in Haeundae, Busan, will present a solo exhibition by artist Jeong-A Bang. Born in 1968, Jeong-A Bang is one of Korea’s leading realist painters, known for sharply capturing the structural contradictions of contemporary society and the precarious realities faced by individuals. Titled Water and Fire Alike, this exhibition showcases her latest works, confronting today’s world where opposing and contradictory elements coexist, much like water and fire. On Saturday, September 20 at 3 PM, Gallery MAC will also host an artist talk with Jeong-A Bang, offering visitors an opportunity to engage in an in-depth conversation about her artistic practice and works. We warmly welcome all who are interested to join this special occasion.

(좌) 방정아, 손톱 달님, 340x240cm, Acrylic coloring on cotton lumps, 2025

(우) 방정아, 소름 쫙, 220x200cm, Acrylic coloring on cotton lumps, 2025

Jeong-A Bang Solo Exhibition
《Water and Fire Alike》

“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.

On Bang’s canvas, images that appear unrelated are strangely intertwined. A woman embracing a leopard-patterned bag while a leopard passes by outside the bus window; a blank face as doctor fish nibble at her toes; baskets filled with peaches and scallions—such incongruous objects and beings coexist within the same frame, meeting each other in estrangement. The artist focuses on the human attitude of holding together situations and things as opposite as “water and fire,” enduring them to the end. Familiar landscapes fractured by subtle fissures, and scenes that embrace the heterogeneous, expose the tangled emotions and social tensions of daily life. They become metaphors for the contradictions layered throughout our existence—life and death, power and vulnerability, nature and humanity.

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.

방정아, 일렁이던 너희, 90.9x60.6cm, Arcylic on canvas, 2025

[Artist Statement] Water and Fire Alike

Water is fine. Fire is fine.
Does this mean that both this and that are equally acceptable?
To charge ahead regardless of circumstances?

In truth, in the conditions we live in today—
as inhabitants of the earth who must always find a way—
it is difficult to leisurely weigh out situations and positions.
We feel we must do something, anything.
Art, too, seems compelled to act.
I wander, searching endlessly.

This solo exhibition is prepared under the title Water and Fire Alike.
I hope viewers will take in the works within this larger framework.
At first glance they may appear incoherent, even chaotic.
That is simply the way I work; I cannot force them into one consistent narrative.
I can only hope that viewers will thread them together in their own way.

The works touch upon stories of young women in their twenties,
acts of psychological projection, object-oriented ontology, and the questions of life and death.
As always in my practice, vast themes are implied,
yet the images I reveal are not vast in themselves.

Several years ago, I began abandoning the rectangular frame.
By layering translucent and various fabrics,
I have been creating irregularly shaped works.
This year, I expanded cotton batting on a large scale, embedding images into its surface.
It is meaningful for me to present these large cotton works in Busan for the first time in this exhibition.

(2025, Jeong-A Bang)