M.ART.EX., Mural Art Exchange since 2015

M.ART.EX. is part of Murals Inc. and initiator of an exchange program between Korea and the Netherlands. Since 7 years, exhibitions of Korean and Dutch artists have reciprocally taken place at various selected venues and galleries.

2019 marked a successful solo exhibition by Ja-Hyuk Yim at Frank Taal Gallery. A duo exhibition at the same gallery will follow in October, where Yisu Kim (KR) and Isabelle Borges (BR/B) in collaboration will transform the gallery into a place where ‘All numbers End’.

The M of M.ART.EX. stands for Mural, this art form will be featured during ‘All numbers End’ but also during successive exhibitions both in the Netherlands and Korea.


Exhibitions since 2015

2022
— ‘All numbers End’, Yisu Kim and Isabelle Borges, Frank Taal Gallery, Rotterdam, the Netherlands

2019
— ‘A Piece of Paper’, Ja-hyuk Yim, Galerie Frank Taal, Rotterdam, the Netherlands

2018
— ‘Memory for one star’, B53, with: Dong Yoon Kim, Jayoung Yoon, JiHyun Youn, Joo Yoon, Jin Kim, Kyunghee Lee, Eun Young Lee, Nuri Gum, Sang Yong Choi, Una Yang, Yisu Kim, Hye-sook Yoo

2017
— ‘Remind_ Hamel was there’, WTC Art Gallery, Rotterdam met Dong Yoon Kim, Hye-sook Yoo, Marcel Wesdorp, Aji V.N. and Soon-yeal
— ‘Remind_ Hamel was there’, Yisu Kim, Hendrick Hamel Museum, Gorinchem, the Netherlands (solo)
— ‘Mummified’, Kim Jin, NL=US, Rotterdam, the Netherlands
— ‘Quintet’, Seoul, met Yisu Kim, Bo Ri Yoon, Marleen van Wijngaarden, Shim Jinsub, Eunhyea Choi, Seoul, Korea
— ‘Grey Matters(s)’, Alexandra Roozen, Gallery2, Seoul, Korea
— ‘Seoul The Exchange’, PHK18, Rotterdam met Ja-hyuk Yim, Marcel Wesdorp, Hye-sook Yoo, Aji V.N., Marleen van Wijngaarden, Yisu Kim, Alexandra Roozen, Don Yoon Kim, Marjan Teeuwen, Kim Jin
— Duo exhibition by Bas van beek and Jin Kim, NL=US, Rotterdam

2016
— ‘In Perspective II’, NL=US, Duo Show with Esther Jiskoot en Yisu Kim, Pulchri Den Haag, the Netherlands
— ‘SCHAAL’, Groepstentoonstelling, PHK18, Rotterdam, the Netherlands

2015
— ‘Strips by Stripes and some other blocks’, Marleen van Wijngaarden, Dorossey, Seoul (solo)
— ‘Beyond the boundary of time and space’, Yisu Kim, NL=US Rotterdam (solo)

“One day my eyes got caught by a ‘drawing’ – created by the broken branches of water plants and reed standing in the middle of a lake (…)” – Isabelle Borges

In her primarily abstract works, Isabelle Borges explores patterns and structures she encounters in the visible world. In urban surroundings as well as in her long walks in nature. Her primary focus is on the geometry of the spaces between things and the resulting spatial dynamics.

Influenced by Brazilian modern architecture and Bauhaus, Isabelle Borges creates large-scale (wall-) drawings that, with their colored lines, conceive open geometric pictorial spaces.

Spatial illusion and the flatness of shapes are in constant interplay in her oeuvre. The forms she creates are not constructions consisting of purely pictorial elements. Seemingly random structures often inspire Borges she chances upon in the urban environment, in nature, or in the mass media. The range of her work is broad, both in its aesthetic and content, encompassing historical allusions, perceptual experiments, discursive interrogations, and purely subjective approaches.

Based on the moving strategy of manifold foldings, reflections, and rotations of the internal; forms, the artist creates ‘moving surfaces’ that provide the framework for a condensed new pictorial space. In the process, her ‘Boxes’ are actual three-dimensional objects layered from different colored cardboard, whose luminous colors and mirrored surfaces open up an invisible space to the viewer. The reference to the Neo-Concretists from Brazil cannot be overlooked, nor to the representatives of the European and New York Schools of the 1950s and 1960s. And comparable to her role models, Borges uses the playful tension between construction and dynamics for poetic narratives and opens a place for individual moods
and fantasies for the viewer.

Isabelle Borges (born in 1966 in Salvador, Brazil, lives and works in Berlin and Rotterdam) studied Fine Arts at the Art Academies in Rio de Janeiro and Düsseldorf following. She has had numerous solo exhibitions in Europe and Brazil, including the Brazilian Museum of Sculpture MUBE, São Paulo
(2013) and the Museum of the Republic, Rio de Janeiro (2000). As part of the 14th International Curitiba Biennial, a large hall at the Museum Oscar Niemeyer, Curitiba (2019/2020) was dedicated to her. Borges works are represented in numerous institutional and private collections in Brazil and all over
Europe.

Yisu Kim (Korea, 1974) lives and works in Seoul.

‘Inframince Landscape’

Beyond the boundary of time and space

Yisu Kim is touched by the visual power of sunsets, 'an area where second and third dimensions meet.' Yisu Kim tries to express a landscape of a dim Inframince floating over the surface of a lake amid the fog. The concept of such Inframince supports her sentiment.

The term ‘infra mince,’ introduced by Marcel Duchamp, means ‘of being extremely thin and tiny.’ This idea can be understood as a thing that has no proper identity or can be explained as the betweenness of an unrecognizable area and its edges. This is a complicated, unstable conception. Kim’s landscapes exist on a permanent boundary, inaccessible like the horizon. Kim recalls the boundary as a landscape of Inframince.

Kim’s works have been shown worldwide in galleries and other art institutions, the most recent in the Hendrick Hamel Museum in Gorinchem, the Netherlands. Her work is to be found in private and public collections.

Kim holds an M.F.A. from the Pratt Institute of Art & Design (New York, U.S.A.) and a B.F.A. and M.F.A. from Sungshin Women’s University (S-Korea).

The adventurous exchange project M.ART.EX. began with the construction of Garak Tower East in Seoul’s Gangnam district by Convexarchitecten, home of Murals Inc. In the coming years' work will be done on a second tower.