Wanrooij Gallery in Amsterdam presents a solo exhibition of the American-Korean visual artist Koh Sang Woo from 21 October 2022 until 21 January 2023. The exhibition ‘Wild in Blue‘ shows a selection of colorful photographic paintings. The vivid portraits of wild animals, with human characteristics, display a prominent use of the color blue with a subtle pink hart. 

Koh Sang Woo is internationally known for both his blue tone photography as the recent ‘Blue Endangered Animals’ series in his signature style. For the series of endangered animal species, including pandas, tigers, bears and elephants, he combines photography with digital painting. The artist is inspired by the work of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Andy Warhol.

As in traditional art, the animals are portrayed frontally; to communicate with them and to grant authority. The confident expression powerfully reflects character, personality and emotions, just like with people. The portraits are characterized by bilateral symmetry and a sense of static stability and unity. As an artistic message from Koh Sang Woo, wild animals are equal to humans and deserve respect; with the longing for a harmonious society where animals and humans coexist.

Koh Sang Woo (1978) lives and works in New York and Seoul. He graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). He double majored in Photography and Performance Art. The artist exhibits worldwide. His autonomous work has been presented at leading art fairs such as The Armory Show in New York, Art Basel in Hong Kong, Art Miami, KunstRAI in Amsterdam and SCOPE Basel, and is included in the collections of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art and the Savina Museum in Korea. In 2021, the extensive and iconic oeuvre was captured in the monograph ‘Koh Sang Woo 20 Years’.

Wanrooij Gallery will also present a selection of paintings by two new Indonesian artists, Elang Sutajaya and Valdo Manullang, at the same time as the Koh Sang Woo exhibition; as part of the

gallery’s Unexpected program.

Frešo lives and works in Czechoslovakia and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava and in Prague at the Academy of Fine Arts. His work and overall approach to art is rather untypical but at the same time they reflect the situation in the society and culture. The artist creates sophisticated concepts and projects presenting them as seemingly simple closed “Pieces of art”. He is often critical in his works and expresses his contempt of the art scene itself and its processes but with a light, humorous and playful undertone.

He prefers short interval between action and reaction and conditions of quick recognition of relations between the expressing “me“ and the indication “he”. Another very typical aspect is that he publicly presents his radical and often despising opinions of the society and art scene which might irritate and provoke a discussion about what is and what is not acceptable as contemporary art or just a self-centered affect of the artist.

Opening hours: Thursday, Friday, Saturday 12:00 – 17:00 and by appointment.

Free admission

“As a little boy I liked to draw adventures. If the paper turned out to be too small, I would stick an extra sheet to it. And then another one. Nowadays I make film and photo installations. I dream of large projects where people can walk through the projections and images. In a sense, I’m still the little boy who makes drawings of stories that run outside the magazine.“

Julius Rooymans grew up in an artist’s nest in a village near Amsterdam. His father was a painter, mother a sculptor. He learned from his parents to never choose the easy way. If you need something for your project, you have to do it. His father regularly had to choose between buying food or linen to paint on. That is the side of art that Julius saw from an early age: self-sacrifice, enthusiasm. Put financial security and health at risk for your productions.

“I stretch the dividing line between reality and fantasy: how much friction fits in an image before the viewer becomes aware of it? Your own eyes solve my photos.“

His work caught on after the Rietveld Academy. He received assignments for international advertising agencies and magazines, made covers for Newsweek and The New York Times, did shoots from helicopters over Africa and stood on skyscrapers in America.

“Registering the photographic reality doesn’t grab me, I love compelling great stories.”