Very powerful large photographs of nature by BAE Bien-U (I really don't understand that name) - it's the Sonamu Series (is that a place .... it looks to be Korean..and it is).  Here's the gallery notes - I'll comment after you read the notes.

- A point of contact between the heavens and the earth - The unique eye of BAE Bien-U can be equally identified in his series skyscape, seascape, sonamu, hyangilam, orum, landscape, mountain works when he deciphers the point of contact between the visible world and the invisible world in nature as well as in the landscape. It is well known that BAE Bien-U has been greatly inspired by pines and pine groves. In the photographs of pines, setting the dominant line vertical in accordance with the image of standing trees, he seems to have expressed them as creatures which rejoin the heavens and the earth (and the nether world). He apparently perceived an invisible horizontal line, which connects the divided regions, inhered in the succession of vertical trees. We can even say that individual pines suggest human beings, while a pine grove reminds us of a thick, jostling crowd. He has preferred to photograph the pines on the hills in the suburbs of the old town of Gyeongju. Although pine trees can be seen anywhere in Korea and a pine grove is a landscape familiar to the Koreans, these photographs are more than visual records of a typical images of the nature in Korea. The architecture of Jongmyo (the ancestral shrine of the royal family), which he photographed before, is a work of formative art itself, while a pine grove or a landscape and nature in general, always exists chaos. When a photographer triggers a camera at nature, he will automatically record an aspect of the chaos. Whether the photograph is deserving of the name of art is another question. Taking an artistic photograph would need an eye to decipher an artistic form in the middle of the chaos. A photograph as a work of art would give some formation to the chaos, while a photograph in the usual meaning just clips an aspect of the chaos in a photographic frame. In the photographs of BAE Bien-U, the pine grove is not taken simply as a landscape, that is, a part of the nature. You would feel as if the trees or the grove, given a clear formation by the photographer, was coming out of the landscape and approaching you directly. Such an impression on his works tells you that they should be called artistic rather than photographic. Text by Shigeo CHIBA Biography 1950 born in Yosu, South Korea 1974 BFA Applied Arts, Hong-ik University, Seoul 1978 MFA Applied Arts, Hong-ik University, Seoul Professor, Department of Photography, Seoul Institute of the Arts

I did not see the artist at the opening (if he was there I did not "connect") - but I liked the photos a lot.  I usually don't respond to photos the same way I respond to paintings - to me there large photos of trees were far off from a realistic photo both in size and cropping - and the subject of trees is an appealing one - with many textures.  All I can say is the photos spoke to me and I liked them.   If it was hanging on my wall, it would improve it - which is more than I can say for a lot of work I have seen in galleries over the years. I will say that there's much more in these photos than I have covered here .... more layers of meaning that I have not touched on.