The eye of artists and collectors is on Asia, as Christie's revealed when it closed the year 2022 with an all-time record for the bookmaker: "It is Asia that has the fastest growing base of new collectors".  What's more, the art centre of the mainland has shifted from Hong Kong to Korea, precisely where Villazan's new collaborative exhibition with Noblesse Collection can be visited.

Noblesse Collection is an art space that presents innovative and exceptional art to the public, reflecting its commitment to the motto: "Bringing art to life". Managed by Noblesse Media International, which publishes magazines such as <Noblesse>, <Noblesse MEN> and <artnow>, Noblesse Collection not only discovers and supports artists from diverse backgrounds, but also shares their creative practices through various media, transcending the boundaries between online and offline platforms.

The NOBLESSE COLLECTION X VILLAZAN exhibition presents both paintings and carefully selected sculptures by our notable artists Edgar Plans, Samuel Salcedo, Willem Hoeffnagel, Yang Hyun Jun and Young Lee.

Throughout the exhibition, the viewer can appreciate three large-scale paintings by Edgar Plans, featuring his characteristic little heroes: one is a werewolf who fights against everyday injustices; another draws the coloured clouds that surround him, simulating the artist's imaginary world; and a third depicts his wife Sandra in a super heroine's cape.

In the sculpture series Crash Test, the Spanish artist Samuel Salcedo, known for working with the memory of materials, starts with a cast aluminium base that allows him to create these 'accidents' on the surface, fills in the gaps with scrap material, polishes the surface and gives it a sense of an object that has a high quality, almost jewel-like quality. It is this surface sheen that contrasts with the dramatic title "crash test", which would be like an accident or a test in which something is saved.

The NOBLESSE COLLECTION X VILLAZAN exhibition presents paintings and selected sculptures

With his paintings "the customer" and "escape" the Dutch artist Willem Hoeffnagel wants to portray South Korean culture from the branch he really knows: the food there. Both he and his girlfriend dream of Korea as one of their next destinations, but for the time being they are content to go to their trusted Korean steakhouse and order a tapokki to think about for the rest of the week. Hence the protagonists are a bowl with eyes and one of his characteristic figures about to be cooked under a cooker hood.

In the series "Adult Child" by Yang Hyun Jun, the artist seeks to portray her mother's childhood and adolescence, but in his own way. The girl wears fashionable clothes and shows various experiences such as eating snacks, playing with toys and raising animals... It is an artistic action, in which through drawings, the artist opens the door of time flowing backwards and frees her mother, the root of her life, from all ties. 

The artist opens the door of time flowing backwards and frees her mother, the root of her life, from all ties

Young Lee creates a unique world through primary colours, lighting and shadows that create a dramatic contrast like a theatrical production. The protagonists of his paintings are not people but objects, but they manage to convey an anxious and tense appearance through their trembling. He wants to reflect the fear and agony that we have all felt at least once through a 'mise-en-abyme' that is very recurrent in her work.