Immerse in Gideon Appah’s otherworldly landscapes with our digital catalogue complementing the artist’s first-ever solo exhibition in Asia, The Play of Thought, at Pace Gallery in Seoul.

Gideon Appah

The Play of Thought

Known for his rich, jewel-toned figurations and landscapes, Appah often draws inspiration for his cinematic compositions from a vast visual archive of newspaper clippings, family photographs, and Ghanaian films and documentaries. In his latest works—presented in his solo exhibition The Play of Thought in Seoul—the artist meditates on memories, dreams, and cultural identity in new aesthetic terms hinging on his surrealist vocabulary of forms, layered applications of paint, and careful interplays of line, color, light, and shade. Disembodied heads, suited torsos, and fully articulated bodies occupy space in these expansive canvases, caught in states of reverie and indifferent to the gaze of the viewer.

This new digital publication, available to read above, features a set of poems written by artist and poet Esme Allman in response to Appah’s paintings and drawings. Allman’s entries are presented alongside the work or works from the exhibition that prompted each of her lyrical writings. The publication also includes installation views of the show in Seoul as well as photographs captured in Appah’s temporary London studio.