Discovery: 12 Contemporary Artists from Korea

A contemporary Korean art exhibition that highlights young and emerging Korean artists at Rockefeller Center in New York, curated by Artue.

Special Exhibition

Chansong Kim focuses on 'moment', the finding of fleeting emotions and insignificant experiences in our daily life. She majored in Fine Arts at Kookmin University and has continued to paint with a concentration on borders. She discovered that she was unfamiliar with a photograph in which only parts of her body were captured by mistake, and she studied the boundaries that separate her from what is outside of her body. In addition, she expressed the adaptation, conflict, and tension of a new existence in an unfamiliar place through the “Garden Series,” which was inspired by the narrative of Paris's free and beautiful gardens and plants during her 2015 year-long stay there. Chansong Kim, who is captivated by the uncertainty of painting, indicates the direction of future works, which she considers to be a balance between an interest in the subject's integrity and the material's physical properties.

"Anonymous Feet” is a self-portrait with an anonymous body in its place. In the early stages of her work, she photographs the body with a camera, eliminating the person’s distinctiveness and subjectivity, and transferring the resulting ‘strange lump’ to the canvas. On a low-chroma and overcast background, the body shines out more, adding a private atmosphere through a simplified indoor space. The artist concentrates on the terms ‘uncertain’ and ‘moment’, capturing and expressing the ambiguous point where the boundary becomes unclear. Her works contain numerous paintings of bodily parts, which made her, who felt herself to be the closest being, question the boundaries between the things outside of her and the things surrounding her.

Anonymous feet

The artwork is an expression of the artist’s experience on canvas, and the bodies on the screen are in contact with each other, overlapping, and sometimes deviating, creating a new boundary that becomes an ‘unfamiliar lump’ that does not work to erase the meaning of the body that played its role as an institution and leads the audience to an unfamiliar sense of the creative moment. The artist has continued to paint body parts. Through these works, she contemplates the limits between the things outside and the things outside of her, alienating herself from what she assumed to be her closest companion. The body depicted in the piece is intriguing because it is unknown whose body it is, and a portion of the body recorded by the camera is seen as a lump separate from the organism. 

When the Air Touches the Skin

Hyundoo Jung gathers subjective conversational language by accumulating brushworks that show the physicality of the senses that arise from the inside. After graduating from the Department of Painting at Hongik University, the artist earned a master’s degree in the Department of Fine Arts at the Seoul National University of Science & Technology and was a resident artist at the Gyeonggi Creation Centre. His paintings reflect the trajectory and substance of the human body, while also being hospitable and evoking a distinct feeling. He repeats the process of his works by reacting intuitively to the colours and images formed by the improvisational movement and the state and concentration of the paint application on the canvas. The image of the stacked layers on the screen exposes a spectrum of colours and the artist’s sensual judgement. Hyundoo Jung also gradually makes the chroma heavier while adding a sense of density of colour. He treats the entire screen of his painitngs as a result of complete abstraction and sensation, as if it were directed from the surface to another kind of space. 

The artwork reproduces the abstracts from nature received through dialogue in a manner that makes basic and repetitive color lumps. The artist imagines the structure of the landscape by working a simple brushstroke that conceals the subject across the media’s ‘flesh’ and ideological ‘flesh’. For him, nature is a sensory world, and he employs the body’s language to reflect the moment’s sensory response through quick brushstrokes. Using a series of procedures, the artist thoroughly communicates the surrounding stimuli and demonstrates the journey towards erasing the distance with the object and the returning sense from the canvas itself to the human being. 

Face of the Sun and Moon

HaSeulLin Jeong has an interest in paintings that are located between images and materials and can simultaneously deduce the axis of time. She is a graduate of the Korea National University of Arts and the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where she studied Printmaking and Painting. Later, the artist deliberately leaves traces of the previous layer or creates a support structure that will be influenced by the prior and following layers of paint, resulting in visual interpretation. HaSeulLin Jeong's artwork provides the viewer with the experience of pondering for a prolonged period of time, imagining the source of the material, and sensing that the senses are real through an individual sense that is intuitive and universally shared. 

“18!Practice” is an artwork that reorders the placement of two plates of differing sizes on canvas and inverts the pictures of plate 1 and plate 2. With these techniques, the artist creates an entirely new image by rearranging the layers in a different order, even though the layers themselves remain the same. The artist raises questions regarding the function of painting between image and substance. By painting, she uses various approaches to portray the axis of time. Throughout the work, it leaves clues to infer the time axis or builds a dependent structure that paints layers impact one other to generate visual interpretation. 

18!practice

Jina Park employs snapshots to capture scenes of the everyday and translates them onto the canvas as paintings. Portraying the colorful expressions of exhibition installation sites, performance rehearsals, and night time sceneries, the platform of paintings allows the audience to look back on the otherwise unnoticed or forgotten mundane life anew. Simply defining painting as “both an image and a material,” Park focuses on its unique materiality. As her working process concentrates on repetitive physical contact with the canvas, the transient moment captured by chance with the camera is reconstructed on the canvas over a prolonged period of time. The fleeting moment that could have been easily bypassed, dons new materiality and temporality. One figure may repeatedly appear in various works, while another figure may appear numerous times within a single frame. Sometimes multiple photographs are rearranged into one composition. As such, Park’s paintings are the products of combining images from various timelines through her own painterly perspective.

Crew 2 (Gyeongbok-gung)

The artwork seeks to grasp the subject with the body rather than the eyes. It is the outcome of an experiment to close the distance and eliminate the void between the object by means of immediate brushstrokes. As a result, the features that clearly describe objects or landscapes are decreased, resulting in the building of screens using color pieces and lines or color lumps that are faster, more repetitious, and simpler. For artist, the forest is a space that stimulates the senses of the entire body and elicits an unconscious bodily response; thus, it became the starting point of his work to discover a means to reduce the gap between himself and the object to be drawn. The body that communicates with the forest is reborn as a new body in harmony with nature, and the acquired senses are transformed into an abstract landscape picture. 

Birds, Trees, and

Eunu Lee places more emphasis on the connections between objects than the conceptual meanings that have been assigned to them. Following his graduation from the Korea National University of Arts in Seoul, he has shown various works investigating the relationship between art and design and the form and function of objects. By transforming ordinary things, he explores new relationships and meanings with implications for daily life. His work breaks down the duality of ready-made products through practical ways of constantly arranging, disassembling, and assembling objects, taking the viewer to a realm of new shock in a modern society that places a premium on the mass manufacture and efficiency of objects.

My drawings began by questioning “what I could do.” After entering my studio each morning, I set a time frame to dedicate myself to drawing whatever. However, reminding myself of something solid and tangible and trying to draw it translated onto the flat surface was a quite limited act. My interest quickly decreased upon considering gravity and physical limitations of material, etc. Therefore, I gave up controlling lines and shapes on paper and started drafting freely what is ‘unnecessary to be made.’ My act of drawing began from Moleskine’s dotted notebook. First, collecting two dots with a line or arc, I accomplish a shape from it. Then from this shape, another shape is drafted, with thoughts on the relation or form it creates with the previous one. In this way, the drawing takes up the form of stackings or assembling. Outlined as such, the shapes gain texture covered with adhesive vinyl sheets and color pencil.

June 23rd

June 30th

July 14th

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August 4th

September 2nd

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October 12th

October 24th

October 31st

November 1st

November 7th

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February 16th

January 11th

January 13th

January 18th

January 19th

January 24th

January 26th

January 30th

My drawings began by questioning “what I could do.” After entering my studio each morning, I set a time frame to dedicate myself to drawing whatever. However, reminding myself of something solid and tangible and trying to draw it translated onto the flat surface was a quite limited act. My interest quickly decreased upon considering gravity and physical limitations of material, etc. Therefore, I gave up controlling lines and shapes on paper and started drafting freely what is ‘unnecessary to be made.’ My act of drawing began from Moleskine’s dotted notebook. First, collecting two dots with a line or arc, I accomplish a shape from it. Then from this shape, another shape is drafted, with thoughts on the relation or form it creates with the previous one. In this way, the drawing takes up the form of stackings or assembling. Outlined as such, the shapes gain texture covered with adhesive vinyl sheets and color pencil.


January 31st

February 1st

February 2nd

February 3rd

February 6th

February 9th

February 10th

February 13th

February 28th

March 16th

Heejoon Lee creates abstract paintings from images of the natural world. In 2012, he earned a bachelor's degree in Fine Arts and Sculpture from Hongik University, and a master's degree in Fine Art from the University of Glasgow School of Art in 2014. In this way, the artist collects, edits, and brushes the accumulated experiences and daily images obtained from travels from close surrounding to distinct locations, and incorporated them into geometric shapes. The composed instant images add the texture and time of the accumulated paint to generate a new space on the canvas. In addition to the photo collage and thick matière geometric shapes in <The Tourist> in 2020, the artist shifts his focus from minor objects to the surrounding landscape and extends the visual experience beyond abstract painting to the experience of space in which architecture and painting coexist.

Heejoon Lee interprets the elements of proportion, balance and color discovered in the exploration of architectural spaces in urban areas through his unique abstract visual language. In this exhibition, he presents paintings and sculptures that incorporate the concept of ‘scaffolding’, a temporary structure in the construction process, and installation works that transform the actual exhibition venue into a variable environment. The modern aesthetic space, newly designed through the materiality of painting and sensory transformation, leads to a multi-faceted experience beyond habitual attitudes.

Beyond the Horizon of a Black Hole

Seung Eui Hyun, who majored in Oriental painting at Seoul National University, has continued to explore nature and space. Born and raised in Jeju Island, the artist reconstructs the tourism industry, the non-verbalized romanticism it incites, and the narratives hidden beneath the surface with a cynical perspective. She reveals the logic of capital operating beyond idealized landscapes and addresses environmental and social issues through her dense paintings. By presenting today's scenery as multi-layered images, the artist exposes the anxiety at the point where reality and romanticism intersect and collide. By depicting various phenomena within this gap, she lays bare the emptiness of the saturated modern world.

Born and raised in Jeju Island, the artist explores how tourism functions in contemporary culture, framing the romanticism it incites, and the critical narratives hidden beneath the surface of the industry. Taking an outsiders perspective she reveals the logic of capital operating beyond the idealized landscapes of paradise and addresses environmental and social issues repercussions. Through her highly stylized paintings the artist sensitively but provocatively confronts the anxiety and waste that underlie travel, capturing where reality and romanticism intersect and collide. By reconstructing recognizable scenes she lays bare the emptiness behind our desire for escape.

The Smile Spot

As the youngest participant to exhibit in the Korean Pavilion at the 2005 Venice Biennale, Sungsic Moon has garnered a great deal of interest in the art world. In 2011, Moon held a solo exhibition of his landscape portraits at Kukje Gallery and received high acclaim from both critics and artists. The artist depicts fundamental places in contemporary landscapes based on his latent memories and experiences of childhood, generating a discussion of his personal history. His works reflect moments on time spent with acquaintances, strangers, as well as moments that are so familiar that they become overlooked. Using his thin, delicate paintbrush, Moon carefully emphasizes the sharp contours within the canvas and creates a series of drawings built on accumulation of pencil marks, which end up resembling paintings.

Rectangular Garden

The internationally acclaimed filmmaker Park Chan-wook (b.1963) has demonstrated his passion for photography through a wide variety of media channels. Park questions himself the reason behind the act of taking a picture, leading audiences to contemplate the nature of photography as a medium. In stark contrast to the carefully orchestrated scenes in his films, his photographs readily embrace happenchance and the unexpected, while at the same time possessing incisive and wry humor coupled with powerful drama. As the artist describes his photography practice, coincidence and spontaneity play crucial roles in his photographs as an 'antidote' to his experiences in filmmaking. Park, who as a commercial film director would have most astutely trained the ability to capture the sentiment of the times in his works, provides us with the motive to proactively expand the realm of unexpected beauty within the most habitual scenes of our everyday life.

Washington, D.C.

Utopia

Yoonhee Na, a graduate of the Department of Comics and Animation at Sejong University, has been actively publishing since 2014 to the present. She has worked on serials such as <Blind Garden>, <This Magical Moment>, <Whale Star: The Gyeongseong Mermaid>, and <A Heartfelt Andante> and was awarded the Presidential Award at the Korea Content Awards in 2021.

Since her debut as a web cartoonist in 2014, Yoonhee Na has focused on concepts of fragility and fortitude, often dedicating her works to those who remain resilient and courageous in the face of adversity. In 2021, Na received a presidential award at Korea Content Awards for her Whale Star: The Gyeongseong Mermaid, which combines aspects of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid with Korea’s colonial period under Japanese rule.

Whale Star: The Gyeongseong Mermaid

Hyeon-A Cho is currently working in Seoul and made her debut in 2014 with a short story series titled <Water tank> on Naver Webtoon's Rookies's short stories. The following year, she posted another short story, <Lunar New Year's Eve>, on the same platform. In 2018, she received the 2019 Today's Our Comics Award and the China Jinlong Award for Foreign Comics for her work <Your Letter>. Currently, <Your Letter> is being produced as a theatrical animation and plans are underway to publish a North American comic book version soon. While drawing advertisements and cover illustrations for young adult novels, she is preparing for her next work, <Santa Scout>.

After releasing her first web cartoon series in 2014, Hyeon- A Cho made her name with Your Letter in 2018. Adapted into an animated film, Your Letter tackles the critical issue of school violence and leads to a rediscovery of childhood friendship, the magic of nature, and goodness in humanity. Cho's work prompts the audience to wonder about the backstories that lie behind her characters imbuing her narratives with startling complexity.

Your Letter

Seok Cho(born 1983) is currently working in Seoul and debuted with a work called <The Sound of Your Heart> on Naver Webtoon in 2006. Since then, he has been active as a Naver Webtoon cartoonist, and with his first debut work, <The Sound of Your Heart>, he won the Popular Award at the Korea Manhwa Awards in 2007, 2008, and 2009, the Golden Dragon Award in China in 2015, and the First Prize at the Korea Manhwa Awards in 2017. In addition to <The Sound of Your Heart>, he has published series such as <Tidal Territory>, <Moon You>, <Planetary Human>, <Epilogue>, and <Apocalypse Live> and has also created numerous advertisement cartoons. Currently, he is working on <Planetary Human 2: Planetary>.

The acclaimed web cartoonist Seok Cho started his career in 2006 with the series The Sound of Your Heart which remains Korea’s longest running webcomic to date. Departing from the proverbial sci-fiction question “What if?”, Cho’s work gives free reign to his boundless imagination of the impossible and the unsolvable. Cho’s third series Moon You explores the struggles of a man who mistakenly believes he is the sole survivor of an apocalypse.

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