Art Class: The Selby House — Earl Grey & Bubble Tea

Art Class is back again and this time I went to The Selby House exhibition at the Daelim museum which is running from 27th April 2017 ~ 29th October 2017 in Seoul, South Korea. It features photography and illustrations from Californian born artist Todd Selby.

The Daelim Museum is notoriously easy to find and therefore a great place to spend some down time. It's a small art museum tucked behind Gyeongbokgung, the royal palace, located just around the corner from exit 3 of Gyeongbokgung Station on line 3. I went there for the Nick Knight exhibition some time ago which I loved so I was very excited to hear when The Selby House exhibition opened late last week. The gallery space is pretty nice and its a small building with multiple floors and a lot of natural light. It's a great space and fairly popular as far as galleries here go. Admittedly I am new to photography as an art form and I don't know much other than the fact that I know what I like but photography exhibitions here are very popular and Koreans truly know how to appreciate art.

When I was a lot younger I loved illustrations found in children's books and admired the works of Quentin Blake, Nick Sharatt and Raymond Briggs (I'm forever a child at heart). I wished I could draw a unique and exciting style that was so distinctive that people could look at it and know it was drawn by me. This is what made The Selby House catch my eye. Intially it was the bright illustrations that accompanied the photos which caught my attention. The vivid colours and attention to detail made this exhibition stand out compared to others I have seen here in Korea. And also The Selby House focuses on the works of one individual (Todd Selby, respectively) as opposed to many different artists like the Youth exhibition, for example.

I tend to prefer exhibitions which focus on one artist because you get to explore layers of their work and maybe not just their most famous or attention grabbing pieces. For instance, I don't think I've ever seen a Damien Hirst exhibition. I have seen plenty of his pieces stand alone but I'm not quite sure I understand him as an artist. If I saw a selection of his works in one place I may be able to formulate a clear opinion on his work.

Due to my dislike of the cult of celebrity I was initially unsure how I would feel about his portraits but they do genuinely feel like a window into the lives of people. Among those featured in the exhibition he has photographed big names such as Karl Lagerfeld, Olivier Rousteing but in addition he has taken photos of countless other designers and creatives in their natural habitats and the results are quite lovely. You feel as though you've been invited to a peek at the lives of these individuals. I love how the concepts and colours are clearly thought out very carefully to convey each subject's life or personal art plus the illustrations of the people which accompany the portraits are very cute.