Nocturnal
8 April - 5 June 2022
FOUNDRY SEOUL presented Nocturnal, a London based artist Yulia Iosilzon’s first solo exhibition in Korea, from April 8 to June 5, 2022. The exhibition invited audiences to artist’s dreamlike world depicted on translucent canvases using organic lines and delicate color palette. It showcased 18 new works including a large-scale painting comprising nine pieces and ceramic works that extends her exuberant narratives into the entire exhibition space, introducing more diverse aspects of the artist who creates the unique styles across media.
With interesting motifs and symbols from the archetypal narratives from various traditions, Iosilzon creates paintings that may strike viewers as nostalgic or even romantic scenes from fairytales or cartoons. However, what is seen on the surface does not reveal everything about her paintings. Calling on a set of symbols conveying rich cultural and historical contexts, the artist encapsulates her serious observations of and questions about the human mind, soul, the fundamental conditions of human existence, and social phenomena. Iosilzon’s signature use of layers of paint and translucent fabric that makes the frame behind the canvas seen through collectively enable her paintings to intuitively reflect and explicitly visualize such complex contexts loaded in her narrative.
Iosilzon has explored escapism for the last several years. For her, escapism is an active attempt to restore stability and vitality and rediscover the infinite possibilities of imagination, by escaping reality marked by confusion caused by the prolonged pandemic and political and social turmoil.
Implied by the title, the artist set “the nocturnal hours” as this exhibition’s major temporal setting. The nocturnal hours are tranquil hours during which our reason finally falls asleep after a busy day and our bodies recharge themselves, while our sensibility and imagination are brought to the fore. The artist suggests us to escape into the peculiar, magical nighttime. New paintings are in the combinations of darker colors (goldish yellow, burgundy, navy, and spruce), compared to her previous works. Deep, enriched aesthetic sense, quite distinct from the artist’s existing approach of exuding weightlessness and delicacy, encourages the viewers to expect more about Iosilzon’s lavish, fantastic world.