Art Cube 2R2 to host Xavier Salmon photo exhibition… Seoul and Paris meet on hanji

Xavier Salmon, director of the Graphic Arts Department at the Louvre Museum in France and an expert on 17th–18th century European art, will present the photo exhibition 'Spirit of Korea, Spirit of Paris : The Curator's Eye' at the Seoul Art Cube 2R2 gallery (Art Cube 2R2) starting on the 12th.

The exhibition gathers and shows in one place the architecture, landscapes, and urban atmospheres of Korea and Paris as captured by Salmon through 'the curator's eye.' The exhibition is presented with media sponsorship from The Korea Herald and will be on view until the 29th.

Salmon has overseen graphic arts at the Louvre and has organized numerous exhibitions including 'Marie Antoinette', 'Vigée Le Brun', and 'Madame de Pompadour and the Arts.' From an art-historical perspective that moves between painting and architecture, he has explored the harmony of time and space, and in this exhibition he printed camera-captured images onto hanji, a traditional Korean material, to express his homage and affection for the Korean aesthetics he has long loved.

He was also deeply impressed by the texture and preservative qualities of hanji during restoration work on old art at the Louvre, and has long researched the possibility of incorporating hanji into Western art restoration. In this exhibition, through works he directly printed on hanji, he visualizes the process in which the paper's breath communes with the image in light and time. The light spreading along hanji's translucent grain captures the breath of Korean architecture just as European stone architecture holds the grain of time.

His gaze, which handled light on hanji, soon moves to urban landscapes. The Seoul and Gyeongju landscapes he photographed during his stay in Korea, the architectural beauty of hanok and temples, and the streets and architecture of Paris where he lives are arranged interchangeably to show that the 'spirits' of the two cities resemble one another. This touches on his long-explored theme of the 'essential harmony of art.'

Hong Ji-sook, representative of the Art Cube 2R2 gallery, said, "Xavier Salmon's work is a new aesthetic experiment born from the meeting of the Eastern material hanji and a Western gaze," adding, "This exhibition is a place where the curator's insight and the artist's sensibility converse, and will be a venue for cultural exchange mediated by hanji."

Meanwhile, Xavier Salmon is a Grand Prix winner of the French Academy and a renowned art historian. His publications include 'Fontainebleau: The Time of the Italians' and 'Les Architectures du Maroc', among others, and his photography is regarded as work that, beyond simple landscape recording, investigates layers of time and aesthetic order within cultural heritage.