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How many exhibition works:
- 20 - 29
Exhibition Total Value:
- $30k - $40k
Johansson Projects presents Forgotten Eyes an exhibition of painting by Pablo Benzo and sculpture by Soojin Choi. Known for their emotional and undulating compositions, Benzo and Choi exploit the unstable boundaries between interior and exterior worlds. Their representations of life are warped, distended, burnished, and ultimately engaged in a reality that is elastic rather than fixed, shaped by memory, intuition, and shifting sensorial conditions. Operating at the formal and conceptual nexus of Surrealism and Cubism, Benzo’s paintings reinterpret early 20th-century modernism for the contemporary moment. Grounded in conventions of still life and portraiture, his pastel-hued interiors are rendered as sites of mystery and multiplicity. In Benzo’s painted world flowers float as they wilt and the joints of furniture crease like flesh. Blending the quotidian with the otherworldly, Benzo eschews realism for a dream-like plane of being, offering a comfortable familiarity that always necessitates a double-take. Choi’s ceramic sculptures similarly forgo conventional modes of representation in favor of more circuitous structures. Often figurative, her work treats the human body as a plastic form. Limbs and faces emerge from painted underglaze applied to hand-built planes of flattened clay that twist and twine around each other. Choi’s figures never engage in a moment of recognition, instead looking outward with ambivalent expressions. Their contorted anatomy foregrounds their alterity, evoking the complexity of human connection, individuation, and the construction of the other.
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Born in Santiago, Chile, Benzo studied graphic design before turning to painting full-time. His work carries with it the memory of Chile’s intense natural light and tactile everyday textures, refracted through a distinctly European frame. Since 2013 he has lived and worked in Berlin, where the city’s density of artistic exchange and its layered modernist histories have shaped his painterly vocabulary. His paintings absorb both these geographies: the warmth of South America and the critical rigor of Berlin, fused into a practice that is intuitive, cerebral, and deeply atmospheric. Pablo Benzo’s artistic journey is marked by a series of solo exhibitions, including 'Some things last a long time' at Steve Turner, Los Angeles, and ‘Brief Encounters’ at ART021, Dio Horia Gallery, Shanghai. His works have also been featured in group exhibitions like 'Manscaping' at The Hole in Paris and 'The Breakfast Club' at Eligere in Seoul. Benzo's art has gained international recognition, being part of prestigious collections such as Colección Ca.Sa in Santiago, Colección SOLO in Madrid, Deji Art Museum in Nanjing, Foundation Medianoche0 in Granada, and Xiao Museum in Rizhao.
Soojin Choi (b.1991) was born and raised in South Korea, and has been an artist based in the United States since 2010. Soojin earned her BFA at Virginia Commonwealth University in 2015, majoring in Craft/ Material Studies and Painting/ Printmaking. She then pursued her MFA degree in ceramics at Alfred University in 2018. She was a resident artist at the Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis, MN, Red Lodge Clay Center in Red Lodge, MT, and Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, MT. Currently, she is a resident artist at The Clay Studio in Philadelphia, PA. Her work transforms objects, figures and spaces into visual language through the repetitive layering flat and spatial surfaces.
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