In Touch
Czong Institute for Contemporary Art (CICA)
Gimpo-si, South Korea
November 24 – December 12, 2021

An exhibition of international artists around interpretation of the theme of 'In Touch'. In an era where issues of being 'in touch' have been brought to the forefront our minds because of the global pandemic, this exhibition endeavours to offer new ways to visualise notions of proximity and distance, the digital and the physical and the manner in which we connect with one another.

The development of two paintings, Blue and Silver, oil on board, 2021 & Maybe Some Blue Sky Back There, oil on board, 2021, form Lister’s contribution to the exhibition. These works are part of an ongoing suite of paintings which visually investigate barrier materials and the idea of being pulled toward a painted surface.

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These two paintings were selected from an open international call for entries by the curators at CICA for this thematic exhibition. These modestly scaled works were intended to foreground the activity of viewers being drawn toward their surface. This activity in itself is interesting and worth investigating because of the changed ways that we interact with surfaces since the start of the pandemic. Where once surfaces were not necessarily in our consciousness, it is now the case that we are much more reticent to come close to them – for fear of touching them, brushing past them or coming into contact with something on them. With these paintings, tiny glimpses of brightness are offered to viewers beyond painted warp and weft lines, as if to reward close and sustained inspection.

The highly varnished, reflective oil paintings also tap into the desire to create jewel-like surfaces to entice viewers to forge a temporal engagement with subjects (in this case tarpaulin weaves) to which they would not normally pay close attention.