Nana & Felix

Statement

Nana (Hwanhee Kim, 1980, South Korea) & Felix (Felix Nybergh, 1985, Finland) are an artist duo working together since 2012. Originally trained as a painter and a photographer respectively, they carry out projects in a wide range of different media, often in series, such as drawings, photographs, texts, video, three dimensional works, sound installation, etc.

Their work always stems from personal experiences and the need to contextualise them within the larger political and social reality we live in. The connecting thread within their admittedly eclectic projects is a yearning to understand their own place within an perpetually redeveloping, industrialised, man-built world. They often employ a photographical language, in a straightforward documentational manner, mixed with a touch of irony.

In their first two projects “SoMe” and “The Zone System” they explore how photographs are deployed in order to manipulate the public. Both projects focus on authoritative images, such as those used by law enforcement and the advertisement industry. By mimicking, recreating and repositioning, the projects expose the absurd nature of the image. The duo’s recent projects “Let There be Motorways” and “WEAST” have been carried out between the years 2015 and 2018, when they lived in South Korea. Conditioned by the peculiar history of this country both projects deal with a bizarre version of cultural appropriation. Nana & Felix have examined how a national project has been developed based on a foreign, misinterpreted and misunderstood imagery. Their response to such imagery resulted in producing a series of works disguised as a traditional art.

As visual artists, they aspire to expand the understanding of the ways their lives as both artists and citizens unfold within the society we live in. All of Nana & Felix’s projects, both past and future, always try to challenge their own prejudices, processing them with honesty, irony and humility.

GlogauAIR Project

We are currently working on a long-term project called 7hrs of Future. The project consists of a series of comparative works that take the shape of reinterpreted landscapes that portray actual, possible and alternating social and economical realities of Korea and Finland.

During our stay at GlogauAIR we will be working on two different works.

Koti Ikävä (Home Sick/Sad) is a large-scale drawing consisting of 35 individual drawings. The drawings loosely follow the shape of the map of Seoul, depicting a landscape that exists somewhere between a city and mindscape. We have been working on this piece since a year and aim to finish it during our residency.

SEL2020HEL is a series of monochromatic date paintings. For every day of the year 2020, we will produce two small paintings in pair, depicting only the date of the day on top of a solid colour. The background colour of each painting corresponds to the air quality readings of Seoul and Helsinki. The colours of our paintings follow the internationally most used air quality index, the USAQI, which illustrate the air quality both in numbers, ranging from 1 (perfect) to 500 (hazardous) and corresponding colours, ranging from green through, yellow, orange, red, violet to burgundy. Across the paintings, tying them together, we write the corresponding date. In Korea, the date is written YY/MM/DD and in Finland DD/MM/YY. The first day of this year will thus spell out as follows: 2020.01.01.01.2020. This mirroring effect ties the two cities together, producing an entirely new landscape.

CV Summary

EDUCATION

Nana (Hwanhee Kim)

• 2011-2014 MA in Fine-art Photography, Aalto University School of Arts and Design, Finland
• 2003-2004 MA in Fine-art, Chelsea College of Art & Design, London, UK
• 2000-2003 BA in Painting, Chelsea College of Art & Design, London, UK

Felix (Felix Nybergh)

• 2011-2014 MA in Fine-art Photography, Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland
• 2007-2011 BA in Photography & Visual Communication, IDEP-Abat Oliba CEU, Barcelona, Spain

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

• 2017 “WEAST”, Gallery Doll, Seoul, South Korea
• 2017 “Progress”, H2O, Barcelona, Spain
• 2017 “107-1502”, K2 Art Lounge x Gallery Jinsun, Seoul, South Korea
• 2016 “Progress”, Space Opt., Seoul, South Korea
• 2016 “House of Cards”, Artist Residency TEMI, Daejeon, South Korea
• 2014 “The Zone System”, Hippolyte Gallery, Helsinki, Finland
• 2013 “Ways of Seeing”, Photographic Centre Peri, Turku, Finland

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

• 2019 “291 Report Part 1”, 291 photographs gallery, Seoul, South Korea
• 2018 “The Way Home”, Suwon Art Center, Suwon, South Korea
• 2018 “Petites Anotacions Sobre El Retrat”, Centre Cívic Ateneu Fort Pienc, Barcelona, Spain
• 2017 “291 Report Part. 1” Space 291, Seoul, South Korea
• 2017 “Blind Date”, Space Willing & Dealing, Seoul, South Korea
• 2017 “Pingpong in Mak/MAK+BIO+JECT”, Place Mak, Seoul, South Korea
• 2017 IHME Contemporary Art Festival, Helsinki, Finland
• 2016 “Blind Date”, Space Willing & Dealing, Seoul, South Korea
• 2016 “Sensible Reality”, 2016 Artists Residency Festival, Seoul, South Korea
• 2016 “2015 Platform Artists” Incheon Art Platform, Incheon, South Korea
• 2016 “Preview”, Artist Residency TEMI, Daejeon, South Korea
• 2015 “New Present”, Mänttä Art Festival, Mänttä, Finland
• 2015 “Paradise Reopening”, Paradise Inn, Incheon, South Korea
• 2015 “Non-Parallel Evolution of Unrelated Beings”, Incheon Art Platform, Incheon, South Korea
• 2015 “Relational Extravaganza & Arbitrary Dreams”, Lacey Contemporary Gallery, London, UK
• 2014 “Masters of Arts Unseen”, Helsinki Design Week, Helsinki, Finland

GRANTS

• 2017 Artist work grant, Koneen Säätiö, Finland
• 2016 Exhibition grant, Daejeon Cultural Foundation, Daejeon, South Korea
• 2015 Travel grant, Svenska Kulturfonden, Finland
• 2014 Production grant, Oskar Öflunds Stiftelse, Finland
• 2014 Exhibition grant, Svenska Kulturfonden, Finland
• 2014 Residency grant, Koneen Säätiö, Finland
• 2013 Exhibition grant, Svenska Kulturfonden, Finland

Gallery