《The Tourists》
In an era of globalization, we live in a world where anyone can become a traveller. The free movement of capital, culture, and information across borders makes our existence as global citizens tangible, yet it also heightens the pressure to affirm identities grounded in nation, region, and tradition. Contemporary artists confront this ambivalent reality. To embrace globalism risks the loss of cultural identity, while to remain within nationalism invites marginalisation from global discourse.
The exhibition title The Tourists takes inspiration from the Japanese philosopher Hiroki Azuma (東浩紀, b. 1971) and his book The Philosophy of the Tourist (觀光客の哲學, 2017). Azuma describes the contemporary condition as a “two-layered” structure in which globalism and nationalism coexist. He proposes the figure of the “tourist” as a subject unbound by roots or borders, constantly in motion and open to chance encounters. Tourists do not remain fixed to a single origin or destination. They move between the foreign and the familiar, experiencing unforeseen moments and forming new relationships along the way.
This line of thought resonates with Jacques Derrida’s The Post Card (1987) and his notion of “misdelivery.” In modern postal systems, mail is assumed to reach its intended recipient, yet in practice it may be delayed, lost, or delivered elsewhere. In this uncertainty, Derrida recognised a philosophical possibility to challenge established structures of truth, revealing new ways of thinking. Truth and identity do not arrive at predetermined destinations in a linear way; they are continually reshaped through detours, delays, and misroutes. Building on this, Azuma presents the tourist as a framework for rethinking subjectivity in the twenty-first century. The chance encounters and loose connections generated by tourists suggest new forms of solidarity in an age of stagnation.
This perspective also illuminates our understanding of contemporary artists. When approaching a group exhibition, we often begin with the biographical shorthand “Name (b. Year, Country).” This format efficiently conveys age and birthplace but cannot capture the complex trajectories of artists today. Through migration, residencies, study, exchange, and digital networks, identity can no longer be confined to the borders of a single nation. The Tourists takes its point of departure from this awareness. The works in the exhibition are not defined by birthplace or nationality but reveal artistic worlds shaped by movement, transformation, absorption, and reinterpretation.
The following descriptions of the seven participating artists seek to trace some of these intricate pathways. They are presented alongside conventional biographical notation to draw attention to the differences.
Bao Vuong (b. 1978, Vietnam) moved to France as a child and grew up there. He now works between Vietnam, France, and Belgium. His practice traces movements that transcend nationality, exploring themes such as the sea, exile, and memory.
Lin Fanglu (b. 1989, China) was born in Dalian in northeast China and learned textile techniques from artisans in the southwest. She has lived in Beijing, Karlsruhe, and Tokyo, and now resides in Shanghai, developing a visual language that bridges tradition and modernity, locality and globality.
Lee Hyungkoo (b. 1969, South Korea) began exploring otherness and bodily transformation during his studies in the United States. His work oscillates between physiognomy and anatomy, scientific experimentation and comic invention, navigating the boundary between reality and imagination.
Kim Sunwoo (b. 1988, South Korea) grew up in Seoul, yet his practice centres on the dodo, a bird once native to Mauritius. The dodo becomes a metaphor for dreams and freedom, extending the artist’s world beyond locality to a universal dimension.
Cooper (b. 1992, USA) has mainly worked in Indiana. He gained recognition through Instagram and debuted in London. His career exemplifies how social media can shape artistic subjectivity beyond nationality.
Alice Herbst (b. 1993, Sweden) moved frequently during childhood, experiences that shaped her sense of identity. She uses online platforms to access international opportunities, has lectured at Ferrari Design Studio, and is represented in Italy’s Maramotti Collection.
Eleanor Johnson (b. 1994, UK) was born in the United Kingdom. Her early encounters with classical painting and sculpture in Italy and France, together with formative experiences at London’s National Gallery, have informed her visual foundation. Drawing on techniques learned through close study of traditions from Rubens to Matisse, her work reimagines the classical in dialogue with contemporary imagery.
The seven artists have developed their practices through journeys that span childhood memories, study abroad, migration, residencies, and digital interaction. The exhibition invites us to see them as “tourists,” honouring the diverse experiences and identities shaped through artistic practice.
This perspective continues throughout the exhibition. The works on view are not bound to a single origin. They generate meaning through movement, misreading, and reinterpretation. Visitors become tourists, encountering the works within this ongoing process. Like letters sent from different contexts, the works never arrive with certainty. Some evoke unexpected familiarity, while others remain distant and elusive. Within these differences and imperfections, new interpretations and relationships begin to unfold.
Through The Tourists, the exhibition invites viewers to engage with the artists and their works as travellers might, encountering them through moments of chance and subtle connection. These fleeting encounters create spaces where different worlds converge, leaving impressions that endure long after the visit.
EXHIBITING WORKS
 Lee Hyungkoo C05 Mus animatus Pencil, acrylic on paper 28.4 x 23 cm |  Lee Hyungkoo C06 Mus animatus Pencil, acrylic on paper 28.4 x 23 cm |  Lee Hyungkoo C07 Felis catus animatus Pencil, acrylic on paper 40.3 x 34 cm |
|---|---|---|
 Lee Hyungkoo C12 Lepus animatus Pencil, acrylic on paper 50.5 x 40 cm |  Lee Hyungkoo C30 Panthera rosea animatus Pencil, acrylic on paper 56.5 x 75.8 cm |  Eleanor Johnson Study for Fever Dream No.2 Oil on canvas 60 x 100 cm |
 Eleanor Johnson Sinking, Soaring Oil on canvas 160 x 185 cm |  Eleanor Johnson Flesh Smudge Oil on canvas 120 x 150 cm |  Eleanor Johnson The Lovers Oil on canvas 120 x 150 cm |
 Alice Herbst Shield Bouquet Oil on canvas 155 x 124 cm |  Cooper Persian Pots Acrylic on canvas 152 x 122 cm |  Kim Sunwoo Celestial Embrace Gouache on canvas 53 × 46 cm |
 Kim Sunwoo Hide and Seek Gouache on canvas 91 × 73 cm |  Bao Vuong The Crossing 307 Oil paint, acrylic, aluminum powder and wax on canvas 140 x 140 cm |  Bao Vuong The Crossing 306 Oil paint, acrylic, aluminum powder and wax on canvas 100 x 170 cm |
 Lin Fanglu She's Pink Body No.2 Plant-dyed cotton, cotton thread 92 x 72 cm |  Lin Fanglu She’s Whimsical No.5 Plant-dyed cotton, cotton thread 42 x 42 cm |  Lin Fanglu She’s Blue Starry Sky No.1 Plant-dyed cotton, cotton thread 34 × 34 cm |
Artists
Alice Herbst
b. 1993, Stockholm, Sweden
Alice Herbst is an artist based in Stockholm. After frequently relocating during her childhood, she returned to Stockholm to study at the Stockholm School of Art and graduated from Gerlesborg School of Fine Art in 2017. Shortly after completing her studies, Herbst was invited to lecture at the Ferrari Design Center in Maranello, Italy, in recognition of her exceptional artistic vision.
Herbst’s practice is centered on figurative painting, characterized by a distinctive fusion of abstraction and realism. She frequently constructs props from everyday materials such as cardboard, paper, and fabric, arranging them within her compositions to animate the spatial and atmospheric qualities of her paintings. Like a set designer, she orchestrates these objects to encourage viewers to imagine unfolding narratives. Familiar objects, such as a cardboard sideboard or a flattened teacup, are transformed through unexpected materiality, sometimes mimicking real textures and other times emphasizing flatness or artificiality, inviting viewers to find their own meaning. Her attention to dress patterns and color schemes is evident throughout her work, and she occasionally positions herself within the scene, transforming into new characters. Through these approaches, Herbst continually explores the transformation of materials and the fluidity of identity.
Herbst’s work has been exhibited internationally and is held in collections worldwide, including the prestigious Collezione Maramotti in Italy. A former fashion model, she has also been featured in Harper’s Bazaar, L’Officiel, and the BBC. She currently lives and works in Stockholm, where she continues to expand the boundaries of figurative painting and challenge conventional notions within contemporary art.
Bao Vuong
b. 1978, Saigon, Vietnam
Bao Vuong is a French-Vietnamese artist, born in Saigon in 1978. A refugee with his family at the age of two, he grew up in France, marked by the memory of exile and the experience of absence. A graduate of the Beaux-Arts, he has built over the years a body of work that unfolds like a path of silence, nourished by introspection and collective history. Now based between Brussels and Paris, he regularly presents his works in international exhibitions, fairs, and institutions.
Since 2017, he has been developing The Crossing, a pictorial series born from a founding sea and a silent memory. His nocturnal canvases, carved with a knife into layers of black paint and sometimes combined with other sober yet powerful materials such as incense ashes, gold leaf, graphite powder, evoke seascapes where the horizon becomes a line of tension between the visible and the invisible.
In these works, black is not absence but density. It conceals an inner light, fragile and secret, carrying hope and resilience. Each painting stands as both stele and threshold, a trace of a physical, memorial, and spiritual crossing.
This painting invites a direct, meditative, almost liturgical encounter. Without figuration, it offers viewers the possibility to project themselves within. Like a collective chant without words, The Crossing opens a space for contemplation and awakening, a sacred place where what has been lost converses with what, in the light, endures.
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Cooper
b. 1992, Indiana, USA
Cooper is an American contemporary artist from Evansville, Indiana. He studied graphic design at art school, cultivating his aesthetic sensibility, and after an early career in the music industry, he transitioned to fine art. Since establishing his studio in his hometown of Indiana in 2019, he has developed a distinctive pictorial world that combines the vivid colors of 1990s Post-modern Pop with the sensibilities of Mid-Century Modern design. He was discovered by Jay Rutland, Creative Director of Maddox Gallery, and has since established himself as a new-generation painter through a series of solo exhibitions in London.
His work reconfigures everyday scenes and personal memories into vibrant paintings, blending nostalgia with a contemporary sensibility. Vintage audio equipment, speakers, plants, and other objects found in his studio feature as recurring motifs, rooted in his childhood memories of his grandparents’ record player and early musical experiences. Cooper describes himself as an anxious person, yet explains that the process of repeatedly painting speaker motifs has become a meditative practice. In front of the work, he finds himself absorbed in their forms, experiencing a sense of calm and stability.
In Los Angeles, his large-scale wildflower murals on building façades led to collaborations with global brands including Coach NY, Adidas, Vans, and Puma. He has also contributed to public projects, notably the mural at the basketball court where hip-hop artist Nipsey Hussle spent his childhood. Today, his works are widely collected by collectors across generations in Taiwan, China, Korea, and beyond. Under the motto “I Am Cooper,” he transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary, offering viewers both an encounter with his vision and a reflective mirror of themselves.
Eleanor Johnson
b. 1994, UK
Eleanor Johnson received a BA in History of Art from University College London (UCL) and an MA in Fine Art from the City & Guilds of London Art School. In 2019, she undertook a two-month residency at Palazzo Monti in Brescia, Italy, and in 2025 she was awarded First Prize in Jackson’s Art Prize. She currently lives and works in Oxfordshire, UK.
Johnson’s paintings are characterised by large canvases and vigorous gestures, combining references to classical painting with contemporary imagery. Early encounters with Old Master paintings and sculptures in Italy and France, as well as repeated visits to monumental works at the National Gallery in London, formed the foundation of her visual language. She developed her technique through careful observation and study of traditions ranging from Rubens to Matisse, beginning her large canvases with palettes drawn from Annibale Carracci or Nicolas Poussin, then layering them with contemporary imagery sourced from the internet. Rooted in myths and fairytales, her works often begin with a character or an atmosphere, gradually building multiple layers of imagery that encourage prolonged engagement and interpretation. The exuberance and fantastical qualities of Baroque paintings are strongly reflected in her pictorial sensibility.
More recently, Johnson has become aware of a distinctive aspect of her perception. Owing to a binocular vision condition, she perceives the world less in terms of three-dimensional depth and more as a series of overlapping planes. This visual trait informs the unique spatiality and dreamlike atmosphere of her compositions, where figures often occupy on a single plane. Expanding this into the theme of “unstable perception,” she seeks to convey the tension that exists on the threshold between wakefulness and sleep. Johnson’s works are held in private and institutional collections across the UK, the United States, Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America. Her practice, which traverses the classical and the contemporary, myth and perception, has garnered considerable recognition both within the art world and the art market.
Lee Hyungkoo
b. 1969, Pohang, South Korea
Hyungkoo Lee received his BFA in Sculpture from Hongik University, Seoul, and his MFA in Sculpture from Yale University, New Haven. He gained international recognition as the representative artist for the Korean Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007, and since then has developed a practice that resists categorization, spanning sculpture, installation, video, and performance. His work reflects wide-ranging interests and relentless experimentation, positioning him as one of the most distinctive figures in contemporary art from Korea.
At the core of Lee’s practice is an attempt to decenter the human perspective and reimagine the world through unfamiliar and unconventional lenses. In The Objectuals series, he created devices that magnified and distorted body parts, challenging Western ideals of beauty, which later evolved into Animatus, imagining the skeletal anatomies of anthropomorphized cartoon characters. Eye Trace extended this inquiry into the perspectives of non-human beings, while Face Trace combined his own face with twelve skull samples to question cultural standards of beauty and the symbolic codes of physiognomy. In Measure, Lee traced the movement of horses and riders in dressage, exploring issues of control, coexistence, and signal. These investigations merge anatomical and biological imagination with artistic creativity, revealing his persistent commitment to rethinking the body and the world in layered and unfamiliar ways. Most recently, his new work Kilikilimauna, presented at the 2024 Bazaar exhibition UNDER/STAND, expanded his inquiry to the cosmic dimension, reflecting on matter, origin, and the universe.
Lee has exhibited widely at major institutions including the Natural History Museum (Basel), Espace Louis Vuitton (Paris), the Royal Academy (London), Minsheng Art Museum (Shanghai), and Leeum Museum of Art (Seoul). His recent solo exhibitions include Doosan Gallery and P21, Seoul (2021–22), and Busan Museum of Art (2022). His works are held in major public and private collections across Europe, the Americas, and Asia, and he continues to be recognized internationally for his unique combination of scientific experimentation and artistic imagination.
Kim Sunwoo
b. 1988, Seoul, South Korea
Kim Sunwoo is an artist from Seoul, Republic of Korea. He earned a BFA in Fine Arts from Dongguk University in 2015 and an MA in Art Education from the same institution in 2017. He explores dreams, possibilities, and free will in contemporary life through the motif of the dodo bird. In 2014, while preparing for a competition, he came across the story of the dodo—once living on the island of Mauritius in southern Africa but ultimately driven to extinction by the Portuguese—and in the following year, as a recipient of the Ilhyun Travel Grant, he spent a month on Mauritius visiting related sites and institutions and conducting formative research through drawing and writing.
Kim’s work uses the dodo as a symbol to reflect on individuals who lose their innate abilities within the norms society imposes. The dodos in his paintings wander through jungles, dance together, and at times rise into the sky on balloons. He depicts the dodo not as a “pitiful flightless bird” but as a new emblem of hope, holding the potential to fly again. Although long extinct, the dodo is reborn on Kim’s canvas, embarking on new adventures and offering viewers boundless imagination and inspiration.
Kim Sunwoo has held eighteen solo exhibitions and participated in numerous group shows, and he has undertaken residencies in Japan, the United States, and Korea. In 2018 he expanded into public art with Hyundai Motor Company’s mural project under Mapo Bridge and the Eulji Design Art Project. In 2019 he won the Samsung BESPOKE Design Competition and the KBS President’s Award and was named one of twelve Highlight Artists at Saatchi Art’s The Other Art Fair in London, gaining international attention. Since then he has collaborated with major domestic and global brands—including the 20th Anniversary of World Cyber Games (2021), LG Electronics (2022), Hite Jinro (2022), Jeong Kwan Jang, Ricasoli Wine, and Galleria Department Store (2023), Bulgari (2023)—and in 2025 he has further broadened his reach through projects with Starbucks, the Lotte Cultural Foundation and Lotte Wellfood, and Santa Maria Novella.
Lin Fanglu
b. 1989, Dalian, China
Lin Fanglu was born in Dalian, China and now lives and works in Shanghai. She earned her BFA from the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing in 2008 and her MFA from the same institution in 2012. She also joined exchange programs at the Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe in Germany and the Tokyo University of the Arts in Japan. In Dali’s Zhoucheng village in Yunnan Province she spent a year learning tie-dyeing, weaving and knotting directly from local craftswomen of China’s ethnic minorities, and over the past decade she has turned these skills into large-scale installations.
Lin grounds her practice in the textile arts sustained by women artisans in the rural southwestern provinces of Yunnan and Guizhou. Drawing on the textile cultures of the Bai and Dong communities, she braids, folds and knots natural materials such as cotton thread, cotton cloth and bamboo to expand inherited techniques into monumental installations. Her works actively reveal the labor and wisdom accumulated by generations of anonymous women and translate them into a contemporary visual language. They combine the warmth of care and love with the overwhelming experience created by large scale and intense textures. Her long-running series She pays tribute to the vitality and endurance of these craft traditions in the face of adversity. Dense weavings unfold into organic forms reminiscent of leaves, flowers, roots and marine life, offering viewers comfort and repose at times and at others a tension as if on the verge of engulfment.
Her innovative practice has gained international recognition. Lin won the Grand Prize at the LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft Prize in 2021 and was named to Apollo Magazine’s “40 Under 40 Craft” in 2024. She undertook a residency at the Swatch Art Peace Hotel in Shanghai in 2022 and has presented her work at major group exhibitions worldwide, including the Venice Design Biennial, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, the NGV Triennial in Melbourne, and the Guangzhou Design Triennial. Her works are held in prominent public collections such as the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, and the Erarta Museum of Contemporary Art in St. Petersburg.