With its title, Art and Synesthesia, inspired by the synesthetic art that gained brief popularity in the Western art world between the late 16th to early 17th century, the exhibition displays a collection of paintings showing aspects of the senses of not only vision but of hearing, smell, touch, and taste, and the tendency of synesthesia in which all the senses are linked with each other.
While the traditional synesthetic paintings were interested in didactic presentation of the evanescence and futility of senses depending on the objects symbolizing the senses, today’s paintings reveal that synesthesia is used as a tool to give inspiration and imagination to the making and viewing of the works. These works guide viewers to an inquiry into how the tendency of synesthesia which continues to be discussed in literature and art as a form of special ability or universal perception and as a socio-political code appears or is materialized in today’s art, and how it becomes the source of the artists’ imagination.
The exhibition consists of two sections. The works collected under the first section, “I. Sensory Illusions,” show that viewers can experience transition and association of other senses in a painting which is traditionally regarded as an art form requiring only the viewer’s vision. The paintings of the second section, “I. Multiple Sense: Crossing and Blending,” lead viewers to a new aesthetic experience by stimulating the senses of hearing, touch, smell, and taste in a multiple manner and an interaction between the artworks and viewers.
The exhibition is expected to offer viewers an opportunity to get over the traditional prejudice that a work of art is there only to be seen and, instead, to feel and experience it in a new context. In addition, modern art, while it tends to be regarded as having become too difficult and complex to access due to the diversified use of media, can become more communicative due to the exhibition’s function of exciting multiple senses and multi-faceted sensibility. The event will also lead viewers to an aspect of the discourse or phenomenon of today’s art where there is no single answer due to the synesthesia that defy the causal relationship of one-to-one correspondence.

■ Participating Artists

“I. Sensory Illusions”
Kim Hwan-gi, Han Muk, Yi Jun, Choe Deok-hyu, Hong Jong-myeong, Sin Yeong-sang, Yi U-hwan, U Je-gil, An Byeong-seok, Cha Myeong-hui, Kim Ho-deuk, Mun Bong-seon, Yun Byeong-rak, Hwang Sun-il, Yi Yong-hak, and An Seong-ha

“II. Multiple Sense: Crossing and Blending”
Sin Mi-gyeong, An Seong-hui, Park Jae-ung, Son Won-yeong, Kim Byeong-ho, Choe Seung-jun, Yang Min-ha, and Jeon Ga-yeong