SELF

Make the unconscious conscious, otherwise the unconscious 
will guide your life and you will call it destiny.”(C.G.Jung)

Plain Gallery is pleased to present SELF, a group exhibition featuring works by Momin Choi, Hesi Glowacki, Megan Menzies and Mengxi Zhang.
One of the goals of life, according to Jung's vision, is the process of individuation. An internal journey of discovery and personal development through which we try to understand and integrate aspects of the personality, including the unconscious ones. An exploration of one's emotions and experiences in order to achieve greater awareness of the Self.

Momin Choi paints by analyzing the appearance and social implications of the places he has walked, seen, and felt. The gaze as an observer becomes his attitude to work of art. He thinks it is defined as post-documentary painting. Specifically, he focus on painting portraits in the undeveloped cities. He painted the identity of the character and the metaphorical acts. By displaying characters who cannot function in society in an underdeveloped space, he tried to express the meaning of the subject with a flowing, lumpy and transparent oil painting texture.

Hesi Glowacki creates compositions that imbue reality with elements of fantasy to indicate emotions and spirituality that underlie physical aesthetics. Glowacki's work focuses on themes encompassing memory, otherness, and trauma, spanning influences from personal experience, religion, popular culture and fashion. Hesi Glowacki asks questions about the role ritual plays in today's experience and the nature of things and their transformation, through the unique use of language, materials, and techniques. Glowacki juxtaposes the primitive with the contemporary and sets the cycles of deconstruction and repair placed on the borderline of fine art and artefact. 

In her paintings Megan Menzies depicts uncanny moments and situations that have a highly developed sense of atmosphere and feeling. A head on the horizon. A tear in an ear. A hard shoulder in the rain. Her process involves drawing, painting and writing to explore memory, personal experience and storytelling. She often focuses on ordinary moments that have a heavy, melancholic quality, where time thickens and small details are valued and intensified. 

Mengxi Zhang explores the unknown and the involuntary. Painting is the anchor in her practice that includes sculpture and installation. Her work pursues experimentation, openness and complexity, bridging the gap between language and the self. Linking the micro - such as cells and atoms, to their wider environment, she is inspired by microscopic imagines, neuroscience, psychoanalysis. Her process of making is driven by the desire of understanding and questioning the notion of the self and the inhabitation of a body. It's also a process of dissolving the boundaries of the self and connecting with the world. 

Momin Choi (b. 1985, Korea) lives and works in London. He graduated from a BA in Fine Art at School of Visual Arts Korea National University of Arts in 2016 and MFA in 2018, followed by completing an MA in Painting at Royal College of Art in 2023.
Hesi Glowacki (b. 1986, Poland) is a painter from Poland based in London, UK. He completed his undergraduate studies in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins (UAL, 2020), and a Master's Degree in Painting at the Royal College of Art (2023). 
Megan Menzies (b. 1995, UK) is an artist based in London. She graduated from a BA in History of Art at the University of Bristol in 2016, followed by completing an MA in Painting at Royal College of Art in 2022. Recent exhibitions with multiple galleries including: GLIMPSE, solo exhibition at LKIF Gallery Seoul (2024); Huxley Parlour, London (2023); Liliya Gallery, London (2023); The Artiststellar Gallery, London (2023); Be Art Advisors at 9 French Place, London (2023); Eve Leibe Gallery, London (2022).
Mengxi Zhang (b. 1989, China) is an artist living and working in London, UK. She graduated from BA Fine Art at Central Saint Martins in 2012 and finished Turps Studio Programme in 2021. In 2023 she had her first solo show “Hide and Swallow” in Beijing at Tabula Rasa Gallery. Her works have been included in group shows both in China and the UK, including OHSH project’s “Annihilation” and 1979 Gallery’s “Letters from Shenzhen”. Zhang participated in Kupfer Project Space residency in 2022; more recently she has been selected to be part of Roman Road Studios summer studio programme.