Disquiet vs Harmony brings together nine contemporary artists—four from Korea and five from Italy—whose works explore the aesthetic tension that exists in the liminal space between disquiet and harmony; unrest and balance; chaos and order. Curated by Cynthia Penna and Yujin Iris Jeong, this exhibition presents a timely, cross-cultural dialogue that seeks to excavate and articulate the role of art during times of unrest.
Amidst today’s climate of global uncertainty and fragmentation, this exhibition investigates art’s capacity to simultaneously contain dissonance and harmony. The nine artists from Italy and Korea address the central theme of disquiet vis-à-vis harmony through a wide range of mediums, including painting, sculpture, installation, and textiles, revealing unexpected parallels and resonances.
The theme of the exhibition is most physically materialized in Youngho Seock’s sculptural paintings wherein a raised surface of scabrous texture created from baked sediments erupts from and recedes into a serene colorfield. Danilo Ambrosino and Y.C. Kim probe the limitations of the human knowledge of nature. Drawing from Byzantine and medieval gold ground art, Ambrosino translates the unknowability of nature into the sacred, while Y.C. Kim approximates it with biomorphic abstractions. Alfonso Sacco and Michelle Oh both explore memory, materiality, and the traces of human presence—Sacco through motifs of imprint, and Oh through paint-carvings that excavate stratified surfaces. Similarly, the textured surfaces of Ji Oh’s works intertwine with the polychromatic threads of Adinolfi-Cicala’s pieces, together conjuring a metaphor of connective tissue—an image of humanity as an indivisible whole, composed of elements that are at once distinct and mutually sustaining. This notion of harmony through connection is reiterated once more in Max Coppeta’s plexiglass sculptures of constellations that evoke a sense of cosmic order and universal harmony.
In Disquiet vs Harmony, art demonstrates that harmony arises from the convergence of disparate yet inseparable elements, joined in a manner that produces an organic and coherent whole; it invites us to understand the world through frameworks of connection and collaboration—principles that we must internalize and enact in our daily lives in the face of the disquiet.
Disquiet vs Harmony
Shatto Gallery (3130 Wilshire Blvd #104, Los Angeles, CA 90010)
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 13, 2025 | 2:00 – 5:00 PM
Featuring Artists:
Marco Adinolfi & Massimo Cicala, Danilo Ambrosino, Max Coppeta, YC Kim, Ji Oh, Michelle Oh, Alfonso Sacco, Youngho Seock
Curated by: Cynthia Penna (Italy) & Yujin Iris Jeong (Korea)