Min Woo Nam: Nothing New Under the Sun

23 February – 23 March 2024

I found myself in Margate, driven by an insatiable desire to witness the sea and its expansive horizons.

This was not merely a conscious choice; it was an intense craving, a relentless yearning to align my paintings with nature and immerse myself fully in the profound essence of my existence—the very core of my soul.

Soon after, I picked up one of the greatest American novels, Moby-Dick by Herman Melville. Turning pages, I slowly imbued myself with Ishmael—the protagonist who embarks on his journey for whaling. Then the realisation came to me with a sudden spark—the anecdote coalesced with the elements of engenderment in my paintings.

“Not much, nothing but water; considerable horizon, though” was what I witnessed on the east coast of England. (Melville, 1851) Upon looking at the sea throughout the day, I found it endlessly captivating to observe horizons at various points in time—to a certain extent, where I was dubious about my “Self,” assimilating to the character Haller in Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse, where he grapples with the different facets of his personality depending on the places.

It’s neither random nor a whim of chance, I pondered. I thought of Agnes Martin and her well-proportioned paintings. The aesthetic harmony of horizontal lines and vertical lines could make value and meaning within the painting, just like the Fibonacci sequence and the golden ratio have an intriguing mathematical relationship between nature and aesthetics.

Geometry, as acknowledged by Plato, stands as a timeless, universal language. I realised that it was also one of the most crucial components of my current underlying paintings. I carefully considered the sizes for the canvases and the right proportions in each of the works. The layout may be simple, but it takes many hours to get the proportions, demarcations, and colours just right. Although it is painstaking to get everything right, I find it tremendously satisfying when I complete each piece on its impulse.

I deliberately choose colours imbued with a sense of foreboding for my palette. Engaged in the process of blending pigments to form unique colours, I navigate through an array of infinite possibilities. The slightest addition of pigments exerts a profound influence on the entire colour palette, rendering the process irreversible. I find a sense of appreciation in this method of painting, cherishing the inherent complexity it introduces to my artistic creations.

These choices are anchored in my conviction that art should elicit potent emotions, drawing viewers into the enchanting unknown, reminiscent of the transformative experience of walking into a chapel. Across history, religion has recognised the profound impact of art, nurturing belief beyond the natural world and providing resilience in the face of nature’s inherent absurdity. In our generation, the pursuit is not religious; rather, it is a quest to salvage our souls from the onslaught of technology, which threatens to mutilate our senses.

I wish to expel what I have received, and I hope these comprehensive works bring narratives to our own individual existence.

— Min Woo Nam

About the Artist

Min Woo Nam

Born 1994, South Korea
Lives and works in London, UK

Min Woo Nam is a Korean artist based in London. He holds a Master’s degree in Painting from the Royal College of Art and a degree from the London School of Economics. His formative experience serving with the United Nations peacekeeping force in South Sudan deeply informs his ongoing enquiry into consciousness, perception, and moments of meaningful coincidence that shape lived experience and selfhood. By pairing delicate tonal transitions with measured brushwork, Nam’s work probes the spatial limits of abstraction, creating a field of depth that exists between the known and the unknown. His practice focuses on the liminality between recognisable form and abstraction. This ambiguity is achieved through accumulated layers and subtle transitions in hue, which allow him to evoke internal luminosity and the canvas’s spatial depth.

Highlights of recent exhibitions include Nothing New under the Sun, a solo exhibition at LBF Contemporary, London (2024); Within and Beyond, Rosenfeld Gallery, London (2023); Nouvelle Vague, LBF Contemporary, London (2023); Timescapes, Shtager & Shch, London (2023); Passages, D Contemporary, London (2023); and the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London (2022). In 2024, Min Woo was an artist-in-residence at the Vannucci Artist Residency supported by The Deighton Family Foundation in Umbria, Italy.