Gideon Appah, Will You Ever be Here Again? (2023) ©Gideon Appah, courtesy Pace GalleryPACE Gallery Seoul presents a solo exhibition “The Play of Thought” by Gideon Appah (b. 1987), on view through April 27. Marking the artist’s second solo show with the gallery since he joined its program in 2022, and his first-ever solo exhibition in Asia.
Gideon Appah creates figurative paintings, drawings, and mixed media works with subjects and imagery drawn from his memory and imagination as well as Ghanaian history and popular culture. This presentation will feature paintings and drawings that examine memory and sensuality through Appah’s virtuosic compositional arrangements and his surrealist visual language.
Known for his rich, jewel-toned figurations, Appah paints utopian landscapes that serve as intuitive, outward translations of the inner self. The oneiric, often coastal realms of Appah’s paintings are inhabited by nude and semi-nude figures inspired by the artist’s imaginative readings of archival imagery.
Using layered impasto, Appah constructs worlds that, though visually flattened, take on a seemingly infinite breadth that is at times unsettling and, alternatively, inviting and seductive. In the new paintings, Appah expands his expressions of memory and cultural identity through his evolving technique and renewed commitment to his distinctive surrealist vocabulary.
