Mackerel Safranski (b.1984) has long been interested in the perception of her body, a perspective shaped by her personal experience with a long-term eating disorder. She draws from literature, news, and daily observations to construct the stories and images of the figures in her paintings. Ambiguous objects and fragmented scenes often appear in her work, creating a mysterious, uncanny atmosphere—as if something is on the verge of happening. The narratives within her work, which subtly hint at themes of migration, labor, violence, desire, relationships, and isolation, reflect her interest in exploring the “external body” as something we perceive and respond to within social structures. Recently, Safranski has expanded her practice to include video and installation, focusing on how narratives shift across different media.

In 2008, Safranski was selected for the exhibition Young Korean Artists, an annual exhibition organized by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, to showcase promising young artists. She has held solo exhibitions at A-Lounge, Seoul (2021); Soma Drawing Center, Seoul (2017); and participated in group exhibitions such as Hexed, Bexed & Sexed, West Den Haag, The Hague (2023); Walkie Talkie Shaking, Art Space Boan, Seoul (2022); One Escape at a Time, the 11th Seoul Mediacity Biennale, Seoul (2021); VIA Animation Festival, Viborg Museum, Viborg (2019); Matters of Women, Seoul National University Museum of Art, Seoul (2018); and An Artist’s Attitude toward Labor, Incheon Art Platform, Incheon (2016).

Exploring photography not just as a mere recording medium but as a sculptural material with infinite possibilities, and through this, constructing a new visual language.

I am constantly in search of people and places that bring me a sense of stability. In life, I am always confronted with certain thresholds where I long for steadiness. At those boundaries, I find myself seeking environments and situations that help me maintain a calm emotional state. Most of these are familiar to me: my family, my home, my room, and the surroundings that have held me for a long time. When I ask myself where the process of being filled and forming a sense of self first began, I cannot leave out home and family. I hold close to my heart the softness and warmth of these things, and the precious moments at home where I can express my feelings honestly. In doing so, I try to preserve a quiet emotional balance. It was only natural, then, that the act of painting and the choice of what to paint began with what was closest to me. As I step into the home and room marked by my own traces, I find myself covering over the unstable emotions I could not express outside, and recovering a sense of calm and peace. I capture in my paintings the blue wallpaper close to my body, the scattered blue clothes, the blue blankets and pillows—objects that bear the touch of my hand. Along with them, I try to hold within the painting the tactile sensations of these things against the skin, as well as the emotions of those moments: the comfort, warmth, and tenderness that arise from familiarity.

The feeling of fur brushing between my toes,
the rush of air when my father lifts the blanket high and lets it fall while I am lying down,
the snug warmth of tucking the blanket tightly around my body,
the feeling of touching the cool temperature that has settled into the pillow because of the wind outside,
the soft texture of an old blanket worn thin with holes,
a pair of socks turned inside out on the floor,
the faint sunlight slipping through the blinds,
the sunlight and brightness that reach me as I lie down,
the moon visible through the window before sleep...

I gather these emotions and sensations from my own place and wrap them together, trying to paint their atmosphere and energy. In the process of expression, the act of applying materials softly onto hanji, or tearing its surface to reveal its delicate fibres, has itself become a process through which I find emotional calm. Through the repeated gestures of laying down thick layers of paint and scraping them away, or raising the surface of the hanji, I attempt to convey indirectly a kind of fluffy, tender warmth even through the material surface itself.
Ultimately, I hope that a painting, shaped by the attitude revealed in both the subject I look at and the process of making, can become a bearer of warmth—something held close at one’s side—and that the scope of this warmth may gradually expand.

While painting, LIM Nosik’s (b. 1989) body is embedded in everyday scenes. However, the psychological distance from which he looks at it is either closer or further than ordinary days. The subject of his recent work is a question about how to sense landscapes. It focuses on the individual's response to it as much as on the characteristics of the physical properties of a place. The Workroom (2023) is a series of paintings of the studio desk viewed from different times and directions, almost life-sized. The foggy, blurred screen depicts the appearance of weathered memories over time. It is an attempt to capture the world vibrating in the distance of time and space by visualizing the layer of air placed between the landscape, canvas, and himself.




LIM Nosik was born in Seoul, Korea, in 1989. He received his BFA in Oriental Painting at Hongik University in 2015, and MFA in Fine Arts, School of Visual Arts at Korea National University of Arts in 2017. He has held solo exhibitions at various institutions such as Kumho Museum of Art (Seoul, Korea, 2023), Project Space SARUBIA (Seoul, Korea, 2023), Window Gallery, Incheon Art Platform (Incheon, Korea, 2020), Artspace Boan 2 (Seoul, Korea, 2020) and Hapjungjigu (Seoul, Korea, 2017), as well as group exhibitions held at ARARIOGALLERY SEOUL (Seoul, Korea, 2024), SongEun (Seoul, Korea, 2023), Ilmin Museum of Art (Seoul, Korea, 2023), Art Center White Block (Seoul, Korea, 2022), SFAC Seoul Art Space Geumcheon (Seoul, Korea, 2021), Amado Art Space (Seoul, Korea, 2020), and more. The artist gained attention for being selected in the Kumho Museum of Art and Kumho Young Artist 2022. He was the artist-in-residence at the SeMA Nanji Residency (Seoul, Korea) in 2019, and also was the artist-in-residence at the SFAC Seoul Art Space Geumcheon (Seoul, Korea) in 2021. His works are collected by institutions such as the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art’s Art Bank, Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Ilmin Museum of Art, and more.

Sun Young Byun initially focused on still-life subjects but gradually turned her attention to what was once dismissed as “background” — wallpaper, lace, and calendars. Questioning the conventional hierarchy of value, she seeks to invert and blend established notions of worth, exploring the “identity of value” through visual contradictions.

Her works combine images of famous paintings, still lifes, patterns, and furniture across time and
culture, celebrating the aesthetics of the overlooked. Through meticulous, repetitive painting-a labor that may seem futile-she engages in a performative act that tests the boundaries between value and valuelessness, transforming the marginal into the core of our lives.

Lee Koz, through her artwork, delivers a deep contemplation on profound themes. The boundaries between memory and dreams, and the translational gaps and accompanying confusion that emerge from these boundaries, are experiences many people encounter but find difficult to articulate clearly. The artist attempts to represent these intricate concepts through her paintings. She explores how techniques evolve between the history of representation and the desire for documentation. Reproduction raises questions about what and how we remember, and these questions play a central role in a artist's creations. Lee Koz communicates his unique perspective on memory, dreams, and the spaces in between through her art. By addressing these topics, she connects with the lives of all, providing an opportunity for deeper thought and self-reflection.

The artist focuses on the surface and depth, repetition and layering, and the accumulation of time within them—elements continuously explored through the contrasting material qualities of oil paint and hanji (traditional Korean paper).

SeNa Hwang expresses emotions of loss and anxiety through a symbolic figure—a child with empty eyes. The vacant pupils and sharp whites of the eyes imply complex inner emotions and the possibilities that lie beyond. To articulate and clearly convey these feelings, the artist employs the simple contrast of black and white through the medium of charcoal. The process of drawing and smudging charcoal lines repeatedly resembles the human journey of experiencing wounds, healing, and self-discovery. The work begins as an outlet for suppressed emotions and gradually expands into an exploration of self-understanding and acceptance. The light and shadow within SeNa Hwang's compositions transcend mere visual elements, offering an experience of self-awareness and deep introspection. This reflects the artist's attitude of caring for and healing oneself through affection for others. Her works convey more than visual beauty, inviting viewers to share in the journey of self-discovery and growth amid loss and anxiety.


Landscape Opens Into ‘The Returning Place’

My paintings explore how landscape opens into The Returning Place.
I am drawn to moments that seem suspended—clouds before they dissolve, waves gathering, or a sky just before night arrives. These fleeting states appear to hold something not yet fully revealed.
Recurring forms such as clouds, waves, moons, and horizons appear throughout my work. What first appears as landscape slowly unfolds into place. Through perception and lived experience, familiar scenes begin to reveal themselves differently.

Rather than depicting real places, I paint the imagination waiting within familiar landscapes. In this sense, my landscapes are not destinations but thresholds—places where perception, memory, and possibility quietly overlap.

My paintings move toward The Returning Place—a place that feels newly encountered yet strangely
remembered, as if it had always been there.

During this time he worked under filmmakers Paul Sharits and Hollis Frampton who introduced him to structural filmmaking and Sergei Eisenstein’s films. In 1974, while at Buffalo, he co-founded, with Charles Clough, the exhibition space Hallwalls, organizing shows with Vito Acconci, John Baldessari, Lynda Benglis, Robert Irwin, Joan Jonas, Bruce Nauman, and Richard Serra, and establishing relationships that proved seminal to his development. It was at this time that his life-long friendship with Cindy Sherman began. Longo is best known for Men in the Cities, his critically acclaimed, larger-than-life, photorealistic drawings of contorted figures, done from 1977 to 1983. Using charcoal, graphite and ink, this monochrome series depicting the reactive movements of businessmen and women in static suspension became icons of 1980s art. Longo has had retrospective exhibitions at the Hamburger Kunstverein, the Menil Collection in Houston and the Isetan Museum of Art in Tokyo, and his work has been exhibited in the Whitney Museum Biennial in New York, documenta in Kassel and the Venice Biennial, among others. He is represented in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the British Museum, London; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Guggenheim Museum, NY; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; the Menil Collection, Houston, the Museum of Modern Art, NY; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the Tate Gallery, London, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY among many others. He lives and works in New York.

Key Minjung (b. 1986) has been actively involved in the Seoul art scene since her selection as a Young Creative at OCI Museum of Art in 2019 and her participation in the <Artist Takeover> at SongEun Art Space in 2021. Her exhibition at SongEun in 2021, which saw a significant integration of hanji (traditional Korean paper) work and glasswork, marked a pivotal moment in her career. Minjung graduated from Kaywon High School of Arts, Seoul National University’s Oriental Painting Department, where she also completed her doctoral program. Growing up in the structured curriculum of Korean academic art education, where she focused on traditional Eastern media, laid the foundation for her passion and research in this field. The connection between the artist and the medium s evident in Minjung’s work, which includes landscapes where thin hanji paintings float away from the wall, forming specific shapes on the floor, or instances where paintings hung by the window leave pictorial traces on the wall due to the translucency of hanji. Key continues to imbue a sense of materiality and eternity onto a series of transient moments through her artistic endeavors.

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. 

He explores the ways in which events and objects with fragile qualities are transformed into paintings that project his view of the world. The paintings, created by transferring the shapes of intuitive and impulsive trajectories to the canvas, coloring them, and superimposing sketch lines that go back in time, reflect the site of the artist’s body’s vital encounter with and understanding of the world. The shapes formed by the jagged, impulsive trajectories are glazed and clumsy, but there is a recollected sincerity behind their appearance.

The artist creates drawings on the fly, collecting and reinterpreting ideas from objects. He has seen closely or encountered by chance. He perceives the paper or canvas, the support for recording the trajectory, only in his peripheral vision and draws according to the impulsive rhythm of his hand, or he chooses visual isolation, not looking at the support at all. Relying on guesswork and sensation to capture shapes, the recorded objects become the sketches for the paintings, with their fuzzy shapes. Freed from the desire to reproduce the surface of the object, this act aims to truthfully record the indeterminacy and ambiguity of the body’s impulsiveness. The lines thus drawn help me to focus on the abstract fragments of the events encountered and the elements of the painting.

The brushstrokes that apply oil pigment to the drawing’s shapes move and lay out the color plane based on the direction of the drawing strokes, such as where they are applied with pressure and the rhythm of the line. In this process, the drawing outline inevitably becomes embedded in the pigment of the oil painting, which is then scratched out again with a pencil or re-emphasized with a darker brush, preserving the past trajectory as a final image. The forms maintained by the dense outlines create the appearance of a solid exoskeleton that blocks intervention from the outside, but the gaps between lines and lines become a fragile exoskeleton that allows for contact with the outside. In Jang’s paintings, the viewer’s gaze is actively invited to penetrate through the gaps in the outline, just as bacteria penetrates through the gaps in an exoskeleton, creating a field of interaction with the artist’s paintings. This phenomenon is not only the artist’s way of being in a world with complex causal relationships, but also the embodiment of the artist’s attitude toward such a world.

Asmawee Karee, born in 1999 in Betong, Thailand, is an emerging artist recognized for his exploration of identity, culture, and social dynamics within Thailand's diverse communities. Currently pursuing a master’s degree in visual arts at Silpakorn University in Bangkok, he gained early acclaim as the Bronze winner in the UOB Painting of the Year competition for emerging artists in 2022. Active in competitions and exhibitions since 2019, Asmawee has developed a distinctive visual language that merges traditional Thai motifs with contemporary expression, deeply influenced by his cultural and religious background. His art poignantly addresses themes of heritage, faith, and unity, resonating with audiences across Thailand’s multicultural landscape.

Asmawee's work has initiated important dialogues around cultural preservation and inclusivity, positioning him as a rising voice in Thai contemporary art. His influence extends beyond individual creations, as he participates in community-based projects that foster connections among Thailand’s diverse populations. Through his art and community engagement, Asmawee promotes unity and cultural awareness, making a lasting impact on the Thai art scene and contributing to its evolving dialogue on tradition and modernity in a globalized world.

Tat or Nattee Sujithara was born in Bangkok in 1983. He received a Bachelor Degree of Fine Arts in Painting from Chiang Mai University in 2006. After graduation, he opened a solo exhibition ‘Color of Life’ at Neilson Hays Library in Bangkok in 2009. He later took on many portraiture and illustration projects, and also worked on ideas for next exhibitions. With more experiences in an art world, he decided to be a full-time professional artist and opened his second solo exhibition ‘Circle of Thought’ at The Meeting Room Art Gallery in 2019. He received the Triennale Prize in Drawing Category from the 5th Bangkok Triennale International Print and Drawing Exhibition, at Bangkok Art & Culture Centre in Bangkok. He currently works and resides with his family in Chiang Mai. 


Lee Mina is an artist who closely observes the instincts and habits of animals and plants, granting narrative to their inherent characteristics and shaping the wonder of living beings through a visual language. The subjects in her paintings, shaped by attentive observation, acquire distinct personalities and temperaments, taking their place as if they were individual presences. Through subtle expressions, gestures, and scenes of relationship that she carefully captures, she composes painterly structures that evoke sensations beyond the visible world.

Working primarily in painting while also engaging sculpture, installation, and picture books, her practice moves fluidly across media. Throughout her work, the pure realm of animals and plants intersects with an unknown world that humanity has yet to reach. Her works invite viewers to see familiar beings anew and to imagine the mystery and essential innocence of life.

In the field of picture books, Lee Mina has been recognized by first-generation Korean picture book artist Jaesoo Ryu and Japanese artist Seizo Tashima. She has published five picture books. Her picture books convey layered reflection and symbolism within concise narratives, achieving both visual density and emotional resonance.

River City Bangkok, in collaboration with the Embassy of Mexico in Thailand, presents “Unportraited”, a solo exhibition by the renowned Mexican artist Diego Rodarte. Known for his experimental and boundary-pushing painting practice, Rodarte brings to Bangkok a provocative new body of work that reimagines portraiture for the contemporary gaze.

Matías Sánchez is a self taught artist currently living and working in Seville, Spain. Through his own exploration, the artist developed a signature style of vivid painterly surfaces as a backdrop against spirited characters and objects. His aesthetic and sometimes subject pays homage to Post-Impressionist artists such as Paul Gauguin. At times smoothly rendered, at times crudely abstract, the artist uses recurring images including sausages, bones, rats, people with menacing expressions, to form grotesque dreamscapes, exploding with energy.

Toshimitsu Imai was an influential 20th-century Japanese painter. Best known for his monumental abstract works, Imai composed his canvases with a combination of thick impasto marks and fluid, inky lines to build chaotic, “allover” compositions.

Wonkyo Choi explores the intersections where opposing or contrasting realms meet, overlap, or collide. Wonkyo’s work focuses on dissolving and reconstructing these boundaries, challenging the fixed notions of separation. Recently, the artist’s practice has turned toward the nature of images produced within digital environments. Also, the artist investigates their depth, expansiveness, weight, and spatial qualities—elements often overlooked in purely data-driven forms. By transforming these immaterial, digitally-generated images into physical and tactile presences, Wonkyo attempts to give form to the intangible, bridging the virtual and the real. the artist’s work not only questions the ontology of contemporary digital imagery but also proposes new ways of sensing and experiencing the image beyond the screen.


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. 

Tos Suntos
b.1992, Bangkok, Thailand

Tos Suntos (Panyawat Phitaksawan) is a Thai Artist and Designer known for his outstanding graphic design which can apply to 2D and 3D objects in unconventional style. For his professional artist, his outstanding work is he changes the visual of traditional Thai to a combination of Thai style, universal monsters. pop culture and modern art.

Since the 2014s, TOS SUNTOS has been an illustrator who created his work from surrounding culture, human lifestyle and memory of childhood. When he was young, he was interested in Sci-fi movies and monsters. Therefore, he brings all of his experience combined with pop culture and retro style to his original art works. Tos Suntos first gained international attention when he was commissioned to Adidas Headquarter as representative from Thailand.
 
Tos Suntos has embedded Thai Identity in his delightful works in the biggest Adidas shop in the center of Bangkok Thailand. His talents are expressed in painting, digital paint, graphic design, collage art and sculpture; which are full of delicate patterns, super detail and layers of art.

Tuagomstudio (Born in 1986), known as Pazut Wutigornsombathkul, a visionary Thai artist dedicated to propagating delight and merriment. His passion for art kindled during his early years, ignited by his sister's enchanting sketches. Armed with a degree in interior design, he embarked on a three-year journey in the industry before he resolved to pursue his lifelong dream of birthing his very own cartoon character.

In 2014, Pazut embarked on a creative journey, designing characters that were born from his own imagination. He started by combining geometric shapes, crafting them together until they formed a perfect circle, evoking feelings of cuteness, simplicity, and harmony. This led to the birth of “Tuagomstudio”, a name that would become a wellspring of inspiration for the artist to share positive emotions with those who encountered his creations. It became a small, bright light in the darkest of days for anyone fortunate enough to witness his work.

Pazut is not just an artist but also an ardent photography aficionado, and this passion significantly informs his paintings. Every brushstroke and meticulously selected hue in Tuagom’s realm reflects his photographic perspective. His palette primarily comprises the cheerful shades of yellow and light blue, symbolizing sunshine, hope, laughter, warmth, happiness, and vitality, all designed to elicit spontaneous joy and tell the tale of Pazut’s profound bond with art.

His first solo exhibition, ‘On Cloud Nine,’ opened in 2023 at River City Bangkok. It took the audience on a trip through the friendship and bond between ‘Gommie’, the character of a happy chubby boy, and his dog 'Bingsu', which was warmly welcomed. Then, in 2024, Tuagomstudio showcased his Art toy series ‘I'm a couch potato’ at the Pop Toy Show 2024 in Singapore, where it was highly appreciated by collectors from Singapore and other Asian countries.


Tea Time

A Dog with Two People

Through the storm

The Narration of Night

Morning is Gone

My Black Bird

Contradictions in Denim #04

TMS039_w03_2021_Le

TMS035_w03_2021_Le

TMS018_w03_2021_Le

TMS002_w03_2021_Le

반복은 항상 다르다. 왼쪽 장면

TMS001_w03_2021_Le

metaphysical metaphor for fragmentary existence #02

Gleaming Beauty Amidst the Conflict of Position and Prestige #01

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P008_W03_2020_LE

Contradictions in Denim #08

파괴를 전제한 생성 I

She…#02

She…#01

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TMS021_w03_2021_Le

Contradictions in Denim #07

Contradictions in Denim #06

Contradictions in Denim #05

home - persimmon tree

hug #41

hug #37 - bedroom

home - camellia tree

home - jujube tree

hug #36

home - curtain

home - 이불

home #11

home - carpet

hug #35

hug #39

hug #40

hug #38

WD 18

WD 09

Workroom 05

WD 14

Workroom 14

Workroom 12

Workroom 23

L.I.of V.

The Garuda

Monument IV 'Nation, Religion, King'

Gate of Declaration 'THE ASEAN WAY'

J-D The front door of Choi Jeong-ja's house-Two persimmon trees-Furnace-A wall-Clamatis

Haok Valley-Down #B-1

Haok Valley-Down #B

SPACE

융합

What Stirs You to Rise?

How to warm up in a cold room

Stand Up

May You Live As Wide As Your Longing

What Is It Your Heart Seeks?

here i am-1

After som time, we become blossoming bodies-1

After som time, we become blossoming bodies-2

After som time, we become blossoming bodies-3

What Have You Lost Beneath Your Seasons?

In Time, We Bloom Beyond the Darkness 6

here i am-2

for me

Melancholy

There's no one, Even so

In Time, We Bloom Beyond the Darkness 1

In Time, We Bloom Beyond the Darkness 2

In Time, We Bloom Beyond the Darkness 3

In Time, We Bloom Beyond the Darkness 4

In Time, We Bloom Beyond the Darkness 5

Guernica Redacted (After Picasso's Guernica, 1937)

Reflection RO_25_12

Reflection RO_25_15

Reflection FO_25_2

Reflection FO_25_3

Reflection RO_25_3

Letters to Layer-Swan

Letters to Layer-Parchment

Letters to Layer-3

Letters to Layer-Stripe

18!practice

Cake itself

Sunday special

Spotted dog

10!practice

Language of cake

Fitting hole

Letters to Layer-1

Orange Hill

Toast

A man with a flower

Disgusting male mosquito

Drawing Tools

Stretching lines01

Light in the Dark

Albino space kids no. 2

You are your own rainbow

To the Moon

Albino space kids no. 4

Moon Gazing

A Mushroom’s Mood

A Lump of Love

The Boss and the Faces

Action EX

Action EVI

Action EXI

Action EIX

Action EIII

Action EVIII

Action V

Action I

Action

Action C

Action LXXVIII

Action LXXIX

Action LXV

Action LXXII

Action LXXI

Action LXX

Action LXXlll

Action IX

Action LXIX

Action LXVIII

Action LXVII

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Action LXIII

Action LXXXV

Action LXXXVI

Action  LXXXIX

Action LXXXIV

Action EVII

Action EV

Action EI

Action EIV

Action EII

Handmade #01

Pink tree

The creation

Door #02

Slowly crashing waves (9ea)

Handmade #02

My Sweet Home #02

얼굴로 그린 그림 1

Untitled

얼굴로 그린 그림5

왼쪽으로-얼굴을 던지는 사람 1

빛나는 얼굴

돌머리

오른쪽으로-얼굴을 던지는 사람 1

19.06.27-20.02.19

Face of the Sun and Moon

19.08.10-12.19

토끼잡는 사람

Forest and Body_Mass

19.10.30-20.01.02

2018-19.12.06

A Paradoxical Talk 1-2 

Birds, Trees, and

얼굴로 그린 그림 2

반짝 반짝

풍경

19.10.30-12.19

20.10.22-21.02.03

새나무

20.08.21-08.30

A Dream That Comes With Freedom

On Cloud Nine Sculpture