Exhibition Information

			“REPROSPECTIVE,” featuring the works of Nayoungim and Gregory Maass. Having first met in Paris, they have since taken an artistic journey together to realize the art of everyday life, using the world as their workshop. As there seems to be no clear line between their lives and their art, their artistic personalities are quite different yet resemble each other at the same time. The exhibition is designed to look back on their 15-year career as an artistic duo, with previously displayed artworks “reproduced” for this retrospective. This is how we arrived at the somewhat quirky title, “REPROSPECTIVE”.
As the duo put it themselves, “We don’t know the insides of things. We can just see the surface. That’s why we are interested in what spontaneously forms on the surface when various objects join together, rather than in their substance. What matters more than anything else is capturing the moments of individuality and satire sparked by objects when they are in such relationships and situations.” In this vein, the ready-made objects in their work are materials subject to artistic transformation and creative addition. Thus it is meaningless to approach their exhibition with the goal of seeking the original nature of the objects.
The works of Nayoungim and Maass may also appear to be strange and distracting to an audience accustomed to art created in a conventional manner. For the audience, their work may represent not so much “works of art” as the jumbled mess of life. However, elements of humor and levity are hidden in the duo’s messy-looking works as suggested by the title. And at the same time, the slightly twisted aspects of everyday life and pop culture elements contained in them may bring a little smile to the audience. Standing at the boundary between reality and unreality, their artworks may seem somewhat garish yet not frivolous, heavy but not crushing.