Seoul Auction House

Seoul Auction presents A Vessel for Abstraction, a solo exhibition by British artist George Morton-Clark, featuring 63 new works. The show explores Morton-Clark’s distinctive approach to contemporary painting through a fusion of figuration, memory, and gestural abstraction.

Trained in animation, Morton-Clark draws from familiar cartoon characters, filtering them through a raw, expressive visual language. The paintings invite recognition, then unravel it—pulling viewers into a space driven more by emotion and painterly force than by nostalgia. Korean critics have described the works as “opening a new horizon for painting,” noting their unpredictable energy and sharp visual tension.

Many of the canvases hover between chaos and clarity, with saturated colour fields and bold, broken lines that suggest both immediacy and control. Critics have highlighted the way the paintings “offer a vivid sensation, like a fish caught at the end of a line”—playful on the surface, yet tightly wound with intensity.

This exhibition follows Morton-Clark’s 2021 solo show Myths, Heroes & Mad Scientists at Seoul’s Guhau Museum, which was noted as a standout international contemporary exhibition that year. Together, these projects reflect an ongoing and thoughtful exchange between the artist and the Korean art world.

A spokesperson for Seoul Auction described A Vessel for Abstraction as “a rare opportunity to experience Morton-Clark’s work in depth,” and praised the show’s ability to bring a fresh, dynamic perspective to Korean painting audiences.