The Hole is pleased to present Apple of My Eye a solo exhibition by Daniel Um, the artist’s first with the gallery. Working in oil and oil pastel, Um creates dream-like landscapes painting solitary protagonists with notes of melancholy and sweet nostalgia. In an assortment of sizes including very petite painting studies, the artist explores the liminal space between dark shades of twilight and the subtle light of dawn.

Based on memories of childhood camping trips to Yosemite and Sequoia National Park, the works capture the safety and comfort Um felt in the great outdoors. Escaping Los Angeles, he describes finding a home as an outsider in a new country by feeling small but secure surrounded by the largest trees in the world. Creating these works high above the city in his World Trade Center studio at Silver Arts Project, Um paints shelter for his protagonists, giving them privacy and sanctuary, while he works amongst the towering skyscrapers of downtown.

Detailed yet anonymous, the figures act as an anchor for the viewer to enter the world of the painting. The titles provide just a sprinkle of insight to provoke the imagination, as in Edgar whose fire-red hair protrudes in pigtails with a baggy sweater that nearly drags on the murky campsite floor. Outside, a star-studded night sky envelopes the left third of the canvas, as if the story unfolds while floating through space. With plush toys, disheveled hair or Sunday’s best, Um’s tiny protagonists wander in wonder, evoking nostalgia for the bygone imagination of childhood and the thrill of a page-turning storybook.

To really understand Um's work one must not overlook the subtlety and power of color as in works like the all-blue No Waves In This Still Pond and proliferating ochres of Triplets by the Orchard. Tactile layers of oil paint and pastels render dusk in vivid colors, applied intuitively with all the plot taking place on the palette. Color dictates all, working slowly and building layers, the figures only enter the frame once the scene and mood are set. Um's considered and sensitive use of color emerges from a convergence of influences and long looking: from the layering of Impressionists and Post-Impressionists to the atmospheric achievements of the German Romantic period; from the sensory color of Korean ceramics to the power of minimalism in Sean Scully's dark, immersive abstraction.

Daniel Um (b. 2001, Seoul, South Korea) lives and works in New York City. Recent solo exhibitions include Trails Left by the Moonlight at LINSEED, Shanghai and Lullaby at, Turn Gallery, New York plus a two-person exhibition at Scroll NYC. His work has been exhibited in numerous group shows internationally including Make Room (LA), Galerie Hussenot (Paris), and The Room (London). Artist Residencies include Silver Art Projects, New York (Current) and PPP/ Oostmeijer, Amsterdam.