Seung Huh at The Ryder

Somewhere in Korea, a man and a woman decide to practice intimacy to spice up their routine’s relationship, influenced by a series of videos they have seen on TikTok, which in turn are inspired by many cinematographic references. A Love Bath seems to be the best option for this couple to recover that lost spark and this only requires foam and some candles. However, as soon as they get down to it they realise that their bodies don´t fit together as they expected. There is too much water and foam for a bathtub in an average flat. When they manage to fit in the bathtub the water overflows, the candle goes out and they are left in the dark trying to escape unscathed from this intimate adventure in which they have embarked without really knowing why.

This anecdote that Seung Huh narrates when talking about one of her paintings, might be a good starting point for cruising along Love Bath, her first solo exhibition in Spain. This painter finds in her day-to-day experiences the inspiration to create a universe that seeks to provoke the audience by placing them in front of that which is not spoken about, that which happens when no one is looking, that which we call intimacy. In this personal space in which Seung´s work transits, classical themes in the history of painting such as epic, heroism or idealisation are replaced by softer and more epidermic feelings such as shame, fear, laziness or even disgust. More delicate feelings, which are experienced hand to hand and with which one can easily empathise.

Through a series of figures that are endlessly deformed and reconfigured, Seung seeks to evoke the very same feelings she experienced as she lived through each of her described situations. Therefore, her paintings do not reproduce scenes, but rather depict scenarios in which emotions materialise within spaces as important as the main figure. For Seung, these oppressive atmospheres with amorphous bodies result
from a prolonged observation of reality, understanding deformation as a methodology to capture the essence of the human, an essence that, at times, becomes grotesque for being too human. Works such as All about perspective (2023) or Rare encounter (2022) are good examples of these scenarios in which the bodies´ shapes seem to have been kidnapped by the emotions they are feeling, turning them into something new and extravagant but strangely familiar.

By creating a line of work that can only be explained in the first person, her identity as an Asian woman who has lived for several years in the USA is manifested in her work through a fascination with the clash of traditions and all that this means. This fascination can be seen in works such as Reform (2019) and Wild Dream (2022), which draw inspiration from jjimjilbangs, Korean saunas that are extremely popular in the
country. It is strange how in a society as traditional as the Korean one, in which the relationship with sex is taboo, one finds these places of fraternisation in which people are completely naked and in which a stranger can ask you to rub their back, offering to do the same with you right after. This way of understanding the body as a space of care and not so much of pleasure remains in some traditions in different Asian countries and suggests a different relationship with intimacy. A more reflexive and paused one, clashing head-on with an accelerated capitalism that only seeks the most immediate satisfaction, eliminating all of these places’ genuine characteristics, putting an end to everything that is different.

Love Bath constructs a universe of anecdotes in which the artist´s body is multiplied, deformed, and reconstructed in many ways. With the irony and freshness of a story as amusing as the one we started with, Seung tries to create a link with the audience, inviting them to remember their most private and liquid moments as it is in that humidity of the intimate where her paintings exist. She confronts us with a genuinely vulnerable act, presenting a truth that may be uncomfortable and somewhat difficult to deal with, but expressed with the subtlety of someone who speaks quietly to tell a secret, with the shyness and uncertainty of the one who is saying something for the first time.