Min-Woo Bang

In his new body of work, the artist expresses an emotional and visual response to recent and naturally occurring events: Australia's bushfires and the pandemic. In each landscape, Australia’s vast and expansive skies are a vehicle for expression, gently absorbing, reflecting and interpreting the intensities and energies in flux below. In this way, the sky acts as a metaphor for human emotion and mood, conveying a deeply personal and intimate response from the artist.

These new paintings respond to the current moment in time, capturing the beauty of the Australian landscape, while simultaneously “exploring fear experienced from events out of our control”, the artist explains. Here the landscape’s language is distinct, communicating drama in billowing clouds and ripples of light. Dark treetops and faraway horizons invite contemplation of the land as a source of strength and calm as well as a template of emotional intensity. Within each landscape, a strong feeling of presence accompanies the sense of tension that underlies the unknown.