24 10 2024
– 12 01 2025

there is neither a beginning nor an end

Venue: GGM2, Powroźnicza 13/15
Date: 24.10.2024-12.01.2025
Vernissage: 24.10.2024, 6 pm
Artist: Si On
Curator: Patrycja Ryłko Khamis

Visual identification: Kaja Gliwa

Opening hours: Tue-Sun, 12.00-18.00

Consider a world where there is neither a beginning nor an end, and the narrative of history is neither fully told nor entirely understood. The exhibition by Si On delves into this concept, where the artist engages deeply with ancestral memory through the lens of her radical imagination. Utilizing painting as her medium, she navigates both personal and collective experiences, juxtaposing and blending the individual with the collective, East with West, global with local, and anarchy with systematic power. Si On inhabits the role of both insider and outsider, exposing how the intricate forces and connections that shape the world are interwoven.

 

She challenges the symbolic violence, along with the personal and collective traumas embedded in our shared consciousness. Courageously, she confronts atavistic fears—those primal anxieties that either paralyze us or push us to the edge. Engaging with this dynamic, Si On immerses herself in processes of curiosity and post-punk apocalyptic wildness, uncovering the raw truths of existence. She is acutely aware of the dark side of human nature—how easily humanity can be lost—yet, in contrast, she imbues every species, every stone, and every particle of dust with a soul as a liberating voice.


Rejecting fetishization, Si On’s work delves into the relationships between humans and non-humans, reshaping their symbiotic connections. Grounded in a transspecies perspective, her approach challenges the rigid, linear legacy that dismissed belief systems attributing spiritual value to all forms of life—human, animal, and inanimate. By confronting the Western tradition that marginalized such beliefs, Si On radically reasserts the agency of all forms of existence. Her act of imbuing inanimate objects and all life with a soul is not merely an artistic gesture, but a form of resistance against anthropocentric views that traditionally marginalize non-human entities. Her work advocates for a more embracing worldview, where the natural world is fully respected as an integral part of the broader narrative. This reconfiguration of relationships—beyond human and non-human, animate and inanimate—urges a reevaluation of how we interact with the world around us, calling for a return to a more harmonious and respectful coexistence with all forms of life.

 

Media Partners:
Trójmiasto.pl, Magazyn Szum, Gdańsk.pl, Prestiż Magazyn Trójmiejski

 

Si On (born in 1979 in Korea) after studying painting in Japan and living for several years in New York, she moved to Poland where she currently lives and works; In her practice she explores the topics of vulnerability and tenderness. She examines the connections, depths, and richness of one’s inner life, celebrating the idea that a person is a dynamic mix of experiences, emotions, and various types of influences. Working with the complexity of internal conflicts, she creates her art as a rich and intricate tapestry. Capturing elements from reality – rubbish and trifles as much as significant and valuable items, she mixes the low with the high, the solid with the useless, welcoming and manipulating all elements. She is constantly reinventing, repainting, and rebuilding her works. This harmonious and continuous transformation fosters continuous growth and rebirths, adapting her practice to the fluid nature of creativity.

Grafika promująca wydarzenie.