Minhee Jung (b.1985) explores the sensations and emotions discovered within urban parks and city forests through painting. Her work reflects the anxiety and tension experienced within a contemporary society driven by productivity and efficiency, while simultaneously depicting moments of temporarily suspended calm through abstract landscapes. Fragments of nature encountered within the city — branches, leaves, shifting light, and the movement of wind — are translated into repeated brushstrokes, layered colors, and rhythms of empty space, accumulating on the canvas as dense sensory experiences. For the artist, the urban forest is not an idealized escape from reality, but rather a temporary gap within the system where breathing and emotion can briefly be regulated. Through painting, she explores this contradictory condition in which stability and anxiety coexist simultaneously.

Jung received her BFA in Korean Painting and MFA in Western Painting from Hansung University in Seoul. Her major solo exhibitions include THE SAFE GARDEN: Space Between (2025, Gallery41), The Safe Garden : Space Between (2024, Gallery41), Urban Plants (2023, GS Tower The Street Gallery), and Discovered Garden (2023, Samsaeyoung Gallery). She has participated in international art fairs including EXPO CHICAGO (2025), ART CENTRAL HK (2025), and Galleries Art Fair (2025). In 2022, she was selected for The 13th Gyeomjae Tomorrow Artist Award, and currently lives and works in Seoul.

Can you tell us about your background and how you started your artistic journey?

From a young age, I loved making and drawing things with my hands. I still clearly remember the moment I decided that I truly wanted to pursue art. In middle school, there was a class where we carved soap, and I became fascinated by the simple act of shaping a form. I think that was the first time I naturally thought to myself, “I want to become an artist.”

After that, I naturally began preparing for entrance exams to attend an art university in Korea, and eventually entered a painting department where I majored in traditional Korean painting. However, what I encountered in school felt somewhat different from the idea of “art” that I had imagined. I was more interested in expression itself, while the education at the time felt more focused on technical approaches to Korean painting. Because of this, I started taking both Korean painting and Western painting classes, gradually breaking down the boundaries of mediums and methods on my own. For a period of time, I also became deeply involved in video and installation work.

Throughout my twenties, I constantly lived with the question, “What is art?” I visited countless exhibitions in search of answers, and even while making work, I continuously doubted myself. Then, as I entered my thirties, practical anxieties began to grow stronger. In Korean society, stability and productivity are often treated as important values, and the idea of sustaining a life solely through artistic practice gradually became frightening to me. Eventually, I stopped making work and entered a company job. At the time, I wanted to believe that it would lead me toward a more stable life.

However, while working at the company, I increasingly felt as though I was losing myself. The repetitive structure of everyday life did not suit me, and psychologically I began to collapse under it, eventually experiencing panic symptoms. Ironically, the more I tried to give up art, the stronger my desire to make work became. It was during that period that I finally admitted to myself: I am someone who simply cannot live without making art.

The moment I left the company coincided with the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, and that time became a major turning point in my life. In a situation where no one could freely go anywhere, I spent nearly every day at Hangang Park. Staying there for long periods of time, I slowly began to recover myself. The landscapes and sensations I encountered within those urban forests eventually became the foundation of the work I make today.

What is your creative process like? Do you follow a routine or work spontaneously?

I tend to work with a structured daily routine, setting specific hours to arrive at and leave the studio. In a way, I try to maintain a rhythm similar to that of an office worker. One of the most important parts of my routine is taking a walk through Hangang Park before going to the studio. During that time, I slowly organize my breathing and bodily senses. It feels like a way of temporarily slowing down within the noise and movement of the city.

However, the actual process of making work is highly spontaneous. Before I begin, I may have a vague sense of the atmosphere, colors, or flow I want to create, but once the brush touches the canvas, things rarely unfold according to plan. The movement of the paint, the speed of the brushstroke, and accidental traces that emerge along the way begin to determine the next gesture.

Acrylic paint, in particular, dries very quickly, so control and chance occur simultaneously. I value those moments when the painting seems to form itself somewhere between the two. The unexpected marks created as paint drips, overlaps, or spreads allow sensations to emerge that I could never intentionally construct on my own.

So although my practice is grounded in a disciplined routine, the actual process of painting is much more fluid and sensory-driven. I think of it as a way of embracing spontaneity and chance within a structured order.

How has your understanding of “nature” shifted through your personal experiences, especially within constructed city environments?

In the past, I used to think of nature as something completely opposite to the city — a pure place that existed outside of urban life. But during the pandemic, the place where I spent nearly every day was actually a park constructed within the city. Hangang Park, too, appears natural, yet it is a thoroughly designed and maintained environment. At first, that artificial quality felt somewhat incomplete to me.

However, during that period, I was genuinely able to breathe and recover within that constructed nature. It became a place where I could temporarily set aside the tension and anxiety that repeated throughout city life, and where simply remaining still and doing nothing became possible. Through that experience, I began to realize that nature does not need to exist in a completely pure or untouched state in order to hold meaning.

Now, I think urban parks may actually represent a form of nature that is available to contemporary city dwellers. Rather than being a complete escape or an absolute outside, they feel more like spaces within the urban system where one can briefly regulate their breathing and emotions — a kind of gap or pause within the structure itself. In my work, the park does not appear as a place of total escape from reality, but rather as a space where tension and calm coexist simultaneously.

For this reason, the nature that appears in my work is less a romantic landscape and more a psychological space that reveals emotional states formed within the city. I try to observe not only the sense of stability I experienced there, but also the lingering anxiety that never completely disappears.

Moments of stillness seem central to your practice. What do these moments mean for you, and how does that state translate into a visual language?

For me, moments of stillness do not simply mean quietness. They are closer to moments in which I can fully exist as myself. For a long time, I lived within the speed and standards demanded by society, gradually losing my sense of self. Under the constant pressure to always be doing something, I became disconnected from my own senses, and the balance in my life slowly began to collapse.

What ultimately held me together during that time were the quiet moments I encountered in parks. They were not extraordinary scenes — just leaves moving in the wind or light slowly shifting throughout the day — yet within those moments there was a feeling that it was acceptable to do nothing. It was within that suspended time that I was finally able to recognize myself again.

My work is an attempt to hold onto those moments within the surface of painting. In particular, the Green Pause series focuses on translating the most stable moment found between layers of emotion into a single brushstroke. In the process, I repeatedly build, dry, and cover layers of background color. As time accumulates, the surface of the canvas gradually becomes denser and more solid, and eventually a final gesture is placed on top of it.

Because acrylic paint dries so quickly, a single brushstroke cannot truly be revised. Hesitation and instability remain visible on the surface exactly as they occur. For that reason, I consider the time before making a brushstroke to be extremely important. I spend long periods standing quietly in front of the canvas, regulating my breathing and organizing my senses. In a way, my work begins not after the brushstroke, but in the moment before it — when the mind and body become aligned.

Rather than reproducing landscapes, I try to translate the sensations and rhythms of those moments into color and gesture. The repeated touches, the empty spaces, and the tension within the composition become ways of recording the temporarily suspended state of calm that I experienced in the park.

How do you approach exhibiting your work? What are your goals when showing your art in public spaces?

I hope that viewers experience both stability and confusion simultaneously through my work. When I first returned to painting, I was primarily focused on capturing moments of calm and emotional stability that I had discovered within an anxious reality. However, as I continued working and began looking more deeply into myself, I realized that even within those moments of peace, tension and anxiety still continued to exist.

Because of this, my work today is not simply about presenting healing or peaceful landscapes. Rather, I try to convey the complex emotional conditions experienced by people living in cities — the desire for stability alongside an anxiety that can never be completely escaped.

Within exhibition spaces, I also think carefully about these emotional layers. I hope that the repeated brushstrokes, the density of color, and the rhythms created through empty space slowly operate within the viewer’s body and senses. Rather than consuming the work quickly, I want the experience to become a moment of pause in which viewers can remain still for a while and reflect on their own emotions.

Ultimately, what I want to present through exhibitions is not a perfectly stable condition, but something closer to the reality we actually live in — a state where confusion and calm coexist at the same time. And I hope that viewers, too, can discover their own sensations and experiences somewhere within that space between the two.

What projects are you currently working on, and what can we expect from you in the future?

Recently, I have been thinking a great deal about how painting can be experienced within a more expanded spatial environment. In particular, my interest in large-scale paintings and installation work has been steadily growing. The sensations of urban forests and parks that I explore in my work are not simply images to me, but experiences of spaces in which the body can remain and exist.

Until now, I have primarily constructed those sensations through rhythms of color and brushwork within the flat surface of painting. Moving forward, however, I want to create environments that viewers can physically enter and experience sensorially. I am especially interested in expanding repeated gestures, flows of color, and structures of empty space into the scale of an entire environment.

At the same time, I continue to explore the idea of “The Safe Garden.” I want to further develop the sense of suspended calm that emerges within these temporary spaces of pause inside the city, and to approach that idea through a wider range of forms and experiences.

Going forward, I believe I will continue exploring the small fragments of nature found within urban environments and the emotional layers that form within them. While painting remains the foundation of my practice, I am increasingly interested in ways it can extend beyond a single image and become connected to the viewer’s sensory and spatial experience.

Text and photo courtesy of Minhee Jung

Website: https://www.minheejung.com
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