Shun Art Gallery is honored to announce its participation in Photofairs Shanghai 2024. The gallery selected the works of three photographic artists from China, Japan, and South Korea: Maleonn (b.1972), Hirotaka SATO (b.1975), and Jihea KIM (b.1976) for the booth. The works that are narrative or painterly compositions from different countries, convey aesthetics, the passage of time, emotions, social happenings and the rhythm of the times, thereby constructing a microcosm of contemporary Asian photography.

Chinese artist Maleonn’s “Faramita Flowers” series of works is about the existence and demise of life, memory and forgetting in time. It was unveiled at the first Photofairs New York in 2023 and was widely praised; at the same time as the Photofairs Shanghai is held at the same time, Maleonn and Li Xiaoliang‘s dual solo exhibition “Twilight of Ritual” is on display at Pudong How Art Museum in Shanghai and deserves attention.

The works of Japanese artist Hirotaka Sato are full of the artist’s keen observation and indescribable emotions. You can’t help but hold your breath when you see his works in person.

Artist Kim Jihea’s abstracts time through abstract pictures made from landscape photos, through the way and intention of the paint flowing into the “texture of time”, and intervenes in the past, present and future time, thus revealing the truly abstract time.

Maleonn (b. 1972)

Maleonn was born in 1972, Shanghai, China. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts of Shanghai University in 1995, majored in Graphic design. As a famous photographer, he is one of the most influential Chinese contemporary artists, and one of the representatives of Chinese conceptual photography. Using mixed media such as photography, painting, puppet, video, and installations, he presents whimsical universes where wild imaginations serve metaphorical narratives, often with irony.

From 1995 to 2003, he worked as an advertising art director and won two gold awards at the China International Advertising Festival. In 2004, he returned to the field of art, creating graphic art by the media of photography, as well as drawing and installation art. In 2012, he launched the public art project “Mobile Photo Studio”. He loaded his photo studio into two minivans and spent 10 months travelling through 35 cities across the country. He used the form of a temporary photo studio to take pictures of 1,600 strangers for free, causing a nationwide sensation. The event has led to a Internation-wide attention to this very artist, and the heated discussion on the Internet is still going on.

From 2014 to 2017, in order to pay tribute to his father suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and his life as a theatre director, the artist spent three years directing a large-scale drama “Papa’s Time Machine” featuring life-size puppets. The play became the first Chinese work to be selected for the drama unit of the International Society of Performing Arts (ISPA).

Maleonn’s works have been widely displayed globally through solo exhibitions and group exhibitions, and won the Australian International Digital Art Award (IDDA); the 4th Spider International Black and White Photography Award for Outstanding Achievement of the Year and the Art Photography Award; the Gold Award for Outstanding Works in the Super Tour Photography Exhibition; the Gold Award for Wide Format Photography at the ND Photography Awards in Poland; the Silver Award for Photography at the A DEGINE AWARD International Design Award in Italy, and many other international awards. In 2019, won the Golden Panda Photography Award of the Chengdu Museum of Contemporary Image Art: China’s Top Ten Photographic Artists. His works were selected into “History of Chinese Contemporary Art” written by Lu Peng, and “History of Contemporary Chinese Photography” written by Gu Zheng.

Maleonn now lives and works in Shanghai, China.

Hirotaka SATO (b.1975)

Hirotaka Sato was born in 1975 in Itogawa City, Niigata Prefecture, and graduated from Tokyo Zokei University in 2000. Artists often use vast landscapes and scenes of men and women or couples to create a tension between human time and natural time in the works. Human beings make active or passive choices in their limited life cycle; destiny and the unknowability of the future are both entrusted by the artist to the image of a man and a woman and are expressed through the indifference and generosity of the changing seasons and landscapes.

Sato uses film photography, drawing scripts, and setting scenes to create serious themes. The rich, retro, and even abnormal film-like colors control the halo of time, slowing down the time of the mechanical reproduction era. As a result, the more psychedelic everything in the picture becomes, the clearer the real inner world becomes.

Jihea KIM (b.1976)

Kim Jihea studied at Hongik University and received a master’s degree in printmaking and a doctorate in fine arts. Currently, She is a visiting professor at the Department of Printmaking, College of Fine Arts, Hongik University.

The artist abstracts time through abstract pictures made from landscape photos, through the way and intention of the paint flowing into the “texture of time”, and intervenes in the past, present and future time, thus revealing the truly abstract time.

Solo Exhibitions

2024 ‘Time to See, Abstraction to Touch’, Gallery MEME, Seoul

2023 ‘City of Lines’, The Trinity X Reveat Hannam, Seoul

‘BETWEEN THE LINES’, LG U+GalleryC, Seoul

2022 ‘Touch _ Between Epidermis and Epidermis’, Youngeun Museum, Gwangju, Gyeonggi, Korea

2021 ‘Expanding Body’, ATERTAIN Gallery, Seoul

‘Continuous_Incomplete, United Gallery, Seoul

2018 ‘Kim JIhea & Park Sangho Exhibition _ EMERGING CITY SPACE’, Gallery SOHEON & SOHEON Contemporary, Daegu, Korea

2016 ‘Righteously and Generously … Blossoming’, ARTSIDE Gallery, Seoul

2015 ‘Study of Momentary Time-Space – New Moment of Relation’, Youngeun Museum, Gwangju, Gyeonggi, Korea

24 solo shows including