Simon Morley was born in Eastbourne, England in 1958. Got BA of modern history at Mansfield college, Oxford University in 1980 and MA of fine art at Goldsmith's college, University of London in 1998. Based in Allier in France and Winchester in England, participates artist-in-residence in various places as the Wordsworth Trust in Grasmere, the British School in Rome, Centre d'art contemporain de Pougues-les-Eaux in France, and Gyeonggi Creation Center in Korea. Besides creating art works, he also curates exhibitions and writes essays in art journals. He is an author of a study on art history, "Writing on the Wall - Word and Image in Modern Art, Thames and Hudson, 2003".

Word and Image
His work always deals the relation between word and image as: "VIRUS" - certain word is painted in characteristic type (each type has historical meaning) in front of its background with randomly floating multicoloured letters, "signature painting" - a signature by prominent figure is enlarged and painted on the wall of certain place to which the person has relation, "label painting" - hand painted labels to explain works displayed at an exhibition, "book painting" - cover or title page of a book is transcribed on canvas, "DVD painting" - a jacket for DVD of film or still of film with subtitles is transformed into painting, "postcard painting" - postcards collected from bric-a-brac shops are reproduced on canvas, a work in which photographs of gravestones and words from poems are combined into pairs, a video work showing 10 different mouths saying the last lines of Wordsworth's poem in slow motion without sound, and books published by imaginary publisher, Utopia Press.

Six Halls
Works on view are watercolours of which subject are names of six of the halls in the famous Korean Buddhist temple, Heinsa. Here he painted English names of these halls in Roman alphabetic letters made from bits and pieces of dead flora same-size as realistically as possible. It was quite natural for Morley, as an isolated Westerner in Far East, to be conscious of the British skill of watercoluoring and the tradition of realistic painting invented by Flemish Northern Renaissance artists. What charmed Morley most is the poetic quality of these names when translated into English. For instance, the combination of the word“Silent Light”which is something vague and mysterious, and the architectural word“Hall”which indicates certain place sounds very strange to him.

Seeing and Reading
When looking at Chinese letters, Korean Hangul alphabet or Japanese letters, Morley has no idea what they might mean linguistically. Then he perceives, rather than read these words. He uses the part of his brain that processes images, not words, while at the same time being aware that the images are also intended to convey linguistic message. Then stranded on the figurative image of written language, he feels Chinese characters looked a lot like wooden sticks arranged in different patterns. And then he decided to take this literally and feed the comparison back into the writing of his own native alphabet in order to see what happens. These watercolors bring about the confluence and interplay of literal and figurative meanings, and use the visual pun by feeding into the visible a double resister of perception.

This is fifth one-person show by Simon Morley at taguchi fine art. Please come to take a look. From 5 p.m. on December 11th, we will have a finissage party with artist. Since taguchi fine art is going to move to a new space after this show, this would be the last day of taguchi fine art in current space. We are very much looking forward to your attendance.

checklist of the installation
1. Hall of Embracing the Void
2. Hall of Universal Eye
3. Hall of Silent Light
4. Hall of No Speech
5. Hall of Constant Truth
6. Hall of Resolute Conduct

All works are; 2010, watercolour on paper, 56 x 76 cm

* The text provided by taguchi fine art, ltd..

Opened dates: November 13 - December 11, 2010
Reception with the artist: December 11, 2010, 17:00 start