Bortolami is pleased to present Suspended landscapes, an exhibition of new paintings by Seung Ah Paik (b. 1979 in Seoul, lives and works in Pittsburgh). In her first exhibition with the gallery, Paik expands upon her exploration of the physical and emotional geographies of the human form.

Drawing upon traditional techniques of portrait painting from the late Joseon Dynasty in Korea, she creates contemporary compositions that subvert one’s own sense of embodiment through an uncanny, first-person perspective that mirrors how each of us perceives our corporeal selves.

Through the meticulous and unflinching reproduction of the specificities of her own skin, Paik depicts body parts – intertwined hands, feet, limbs, breasts, and torsos – connected at unexpected and contorted angles. The resulting portraits exist as an antithesis to the highly filtered and manipulated concepts of physical beauty ubiquitous in everyday life, foregrounding the body as a living, cartographic archive.