Johyun Gallery participates in The Armory Show at the Javits Center in New York, beginning with the VIP Preview on September 24. The presentation brings together works by Park Seo-Bo, Lee Ufan, Kim Tschang-Yeul, Yun Hyong-Keun, Lee Bae, Kim Taek Sang, Kang Kang Hoon, Lee So Yeun, and Khairulddin Wahab, who recently began a new chapter with the gallery. Spanning generations, the presentation traces a continuum from seminal figures who shaped the course of Korean contemporary art to artists who have expanded its formal and conceptual vocabularies in distinct directions, alongside contemporary voices bringing new sensibilities and narratives to the field.

The presentation first traces this trajectory through works by Park Seo-Bo, Lee Ufan, Kim Tschang-Yeul, and Yun Hyong-Keun, each of whom forged a distinctive aesthetic within Korean contemporary art. With the recent opening of the Park Seo-Bo Museum bringing renewed attention to his artistic legacy, Park’s pink Écriture brings the sensory energy of color into dialogue with the repetitive gestures and meditative discipline that define his practice. Lee Ufan, who recently presented a solo exhibition titled  Relatum within the historic Palais des Papes in Avignon, France, continues his contemplation of existence and space through the relationship between minimal gesture, material, and emptiness. Through his singular visual language of the “water drop,” Kim Tschang-Yeul explores the threshold between reality and illusion, matter and spirit, while Yun Hyong-Keun creates restrained yet profound pictorial spaces through deep sepia tones that seep and spread across the canvas.

The presentation also brings together works by Lee Bae and Kim Taek Sang, who have each carried forward and expanded the trajectory of Korean abstract art through their distinct practices. Currently presenting solo exhibitions at Museum SAN in Wonju and He Art Museum, Lee Bae explores the cyclical energy and materiality of charcoal through Issu du feu and his recent Brushstroke and Staple works, extending the artist’s gesture of the brushstroke into the languages of painting and sculpture. In his Brushstroke sculptures in particular, the powerful energy inherent in seemingly fragile charcoal is transformed into the enduring solidity of bronze. Lee Bae is also currently featured in a two-person exhibition with Jean-Michel Othoniel at the Residence of the French Ambassador in South Korea.

Kim Taek Sang presents A Sky Full of Stars 24-3 (2024). Through layers of color that are repeatedly accumulated and absorbed, and the light that passes through them, Kim creates a sense of depth and space while revealing subtle shifts in color, light, and time. He is currently presenting large-scale solo exhibitions simultaneously across three locations in Korea—Dalmaji and Haeundae in Busan, and Seoul.

Alongside these works, Johyun Gallery broadens the scope of the presentation through the contemporary perspectives of Kang Kang Hoon, Lee So Yeun, and Khairulddin Wahab. Revisiting his Doberman series alongside portraits and works featuring cotton flowers, Kang Kang Hoon explores the intimate emotions and psychological depth that lie beyond the outward appearance of his subjects. By bringing together individual sections painted at different moments into a single image, Kang presents the accumulation of time as a parallel structure, creating a visual experience that moves between hyperrealism and abstraction. He is currently participating in The Age of Exploration: An Uncharted Map at the Moran Museum of Art in Korea.

Lee So Yeun, who held a solo exhibition at Johyun Gallery Seoul last December, draws upon her own image, memories, and experiences to explore the fluid boundaries between sameness and difference, intimacy and estrangement. Combining self-portraits and scenes from everyday life with unexpected elements, she creates uncanny landscapes where reality and imagination intersect, capturing moments in which inner and outer worlds converge through clearly defined forms and colors.

Khairulddin Wahab, who began a new artistic journey with Johyun Gallery this summer, explores through painting the relationships between landscape and the human figure, memory and place. Drawing attention to Southeast Asia’s environmental history and the visual structures shaped by colonialism, he transforms images of nature and the human figure into scenes where personal and collective memories intersect, constructing distinctive narrative landscapes in which reality and memory overlap.

Venue
Javits Center 429 11th Avenue New York, NY 10001 – Booth 405

Artists
Lee Bae, Kang Kang Hoon, Kim Taek Sang, Park Seo-Bo, Kim Tschang Yeul, Lee Ufan, Lee So Yeun, Yun Hyong-Keun, Khairulddin Wahab

Exhibition Dates
September 24 – 27, 2026

Website
https://www.johyungallery.com

Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/johyungallery/

Contact
info@johyungallery.com

About the Artist

Lee Bae

Lee Bae focuses on the expressive potential of charcoal as a medium. Over the course of three decades, Lee has dedicated himself to creating a diverse range of iterations of Korean painting through his use of charcoal and abstract forms that are self-sufficient and rich in spiritual and energetic qualities. By exploring immanent notions such as yielding, respiring, and circulation, which are embodied by charcoal as a material, Lee’s work resonates with themes of life and death, absence and presence, light and shadow, form, and emptiness. Lee’s oeuvre spans a wide range of mediums and forms, from drawings to canvas-based works, as well as installations, with each new work serving to expand upon his unique vision and approach. Lee is currently the subject of A Dance for the Prayer at He Art Museum, his first museum solo exhibition in southern China. His solo exhibition En Attendant is also on view at Museum SAN in Wonju, South Korea, and at the Abbaye de Beaulieu-en-Rouergue in France, bringing together key works from across his practice alongside recent works. Lee’s works have been featured at museums and institutions worldwide including: Venice Biennale, Rockefeller Center, New York, Phi Foundation, Montreal, Canada; Indang Museum, Daegu, South Korea; Wilmotte Foundation, Venice, Italy; Fondation Maeght, Saint-Paul de Vence, France; Musée des Beaux-Arts, Vannes, France; and Musée Guimet, Paris, France. Among many others, Lee’s work is in the permanent collections of museums including the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Gwacheon, South Korea; Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea; Leeum-Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea; Fondation Maeght, Saint-Paul de Vence, France; Musée Guimet, Paris, France; Baruj Foundation, Barcelona, Spain, and Privada Allegro Foundation, Madrid, Spain.

Kang Kang Hoon

Kang Kang Hoon’s portrait series not only captures external features but also delves into the deeper emotional essence of each subject, inviting viewers to confront their true selves. His daughter, a recurring motif, serves as both the focal point of the artwork and a reflection of Kang himself. In a recent oil painting series, Kang incorporates symbolic object cotton, inspired by a yearning for his recently deceased mother. The contrast between withered branches and bloomed cotton subtly conflicts and harmonizes, contemplating intergenerational connections. Employing cotton as a metaphor for the enduring connections within humanity, Kang explores broad themes of the past and future on the delicate realm between figuration and abstraction.

Major exhibitions featuring his works include the Jeju Museum of Art, Jeju, South Korea; Wooyang Museum of Contemporary Art, Gyeongju, South Korea; Clayarch Gimhae Museum, Gimhae, South Korea; Gyeonggi Provincial Museum, Ansan, South Korea; Jeju Museum of Contemporary Art, Jeju, South Korea; Gyeongnam Art Museum, Changwon, South Korea; and Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea. His works are in the collection of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art. He has been featured and sold out at numerous art fairs worldwide, including Hong Kong, China, Singapore, and Shanghai, China, and he continues to remain active internationally as one of the most recognizable, leading artists in Korean contemporary art today.

Kim Taek Sang

Kim Taek Sang has been experimenting with the diffusion, sedimentation, and layering of color for over three decades through the medium of water. His process is iterative—mixing trace amounts of pigment into water, pouring the solution onto a canvas laid flat, then allowing it to dry. Repeated dozens of times, this practice is both ascetic and curative; he has come to describe it as the aesthetics of care. This delicate layering of sediment on canvas creates subtle interstices that scatter light and permeate the surface with depth and density, evoking nature’s own palette of serene and understated hues. Kim describes his creations as dàamhwa (淡畵 – dàam painting), where dàam carries meanings of clear, delicate, faint, or thin in tint.

Kim’s earliest works in the early 1990s contained commentaries on socio-political issues, but he experienced an artistic turning point when he was captivated by the prismatic waters of the Yellowstone Caldera. Through this encounter, he began incorporating natural elements—water, air, light, and gravity—into his studio practice, developing a distinctive visual language that bridges materiality and the senses, concept and nature. Kim’s works avoid overt contrasts, favoring elusive similarities, subtle oscillations, and minute pulses of light. While his work is discussed within the lineage of Dansaekhwa, his practice stands apart, reflecting a deeply personal exploration of the relationships between nature, humanity, medium, and perception.

Kim holds a B.F.A. in Painting from Chungang University and an M.F.A. in Western Painting from Hongik University. His works are included in the collections of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA), Korea; Kumho Museum of Art; Leeum Museum of Art; and Suwon I’Park Museum of Art.

Park Seo-Bo

Park Seo-Bo was a seminal figure in Korean contemporary art. He was one of the founding members of the Dansaekhwa movement, which emerged in the early 1970s post-war Korea and has since gained international recognition. In the late 1960s, Park began the ‘Ecriture’ series by repeating pencil lines over wet monochromatic painted surfaces. Later, he expanded the language through the introduction of hanji (traditional Korean paper) and color. The work is brought into being through the process of repetitive actions of pasting, scraping, scratching, and rubbing. It delicately balances drawing and painting in a quest for emptiness through reduction. Park’s work has been exhibited internationally, including: Museum of Fine Art, Boston, United States; the Venice Biennale, Italy; Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea; Singapore Art Museum, Singapore; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria; Tate Liverpool, United Kingdom; Brooklyn Museum, New York, United States; and Expo 67, Montreal, Canada. Park’s work is included in the collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, United States; M+, Hong Kong, China; Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, UAE; The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, South Korea; and the K20, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Germany.

Kim Tschang-Yeul

He devoted over 50 years to exploring the motif of water drops. His iconic droplets, appearing as if seeping through the canvas, transition from tangible presence to transparency, balancing wet and dry, light and dark. This meditative imagery bridges reality and abstraction, reflecting the artist’s experiences with Korea’s turbulent history, including colonization, war, and division, while offering universal themes of healing and catharsis.

Kim studied calligraphy with his grandfather and painting with Lee Quede before graduating from Seoul National University. A leader of Korea’s Art Informel movement with Park Seo-Bo and Chung Chang-Sup, he gained international recognition through the Paris Biennale (1961), São Paulo Biennale (1965), and Avant-Garde Festival (1969). A major retrospective of his water drop paintings was held at Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume in 2004. Kim’s works have been featured in retrospectives at the Gwangju Museum of Art, Taiwan National Museum of Fine Arts, Busan Museum of Art, and the National Art Museum of China. In 2016, the Kim Tschang-Yeul Museum of Art opened in Jeju, Korea, ensuring his artistic legacy endures.

Lee Ufan

Lee Ufan dropped out of the College of Fine Arts at Seoul National University and moved to Japan, where he graduated from the Department of Philosophy at Nihon University in 1961. Between 1968 and 1975, he gained attention in Tokyo by leading the theory and practice of the Mono-ha movement. He later became recognized as the key figure who established the theoretical foundation of Mono-ha and has since earned international acclaim while maintaining an active artistic career. Known as the “Master of Points and Lines,” his early works are rooted in Eastern philosophy, exploring how points can become lines, and eventually even transform into nothingness. Understanding his work requires an appreciation of both the meaning of the stroke and the unpainted space surrounding it. Each stroke conveys a sense of stillness within motion-jeongjungdong-flowing with vitality and energy, as if frozen in an infinite moment yet subtly moving. Lee has participated in prestigious international exhibitions, including the Paris Biennale, São Paulo Biennale, and Documenta Kassel, receiving widespread acclaim. He has held major solo exhibitions at institutions such as the Düsseldorf City Museum, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Milan Contemporary Art Museum, Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, and Kamakura Museum of Modern Art. The Lee Ufan Museum has also been established on Naoshima Island in Japan. His works are included in the collections of prominent museums, including the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the National Museum in Berlin, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul, and the Ho-Am Art Museum.

Lee so Yeun

Lee So Yeun’s self-portraits, reminiscent of identification photos, vividly depict snapshots of her life’s journey and the epochs she has navigated. Depicted with bold forms and luminous hues, the objects laden with multiple meanings evoke a subtle theatrical atmosphere and an unusual intimacy. It weaves together elements of similarity and contrast, delicately balancing between closeness and estrangement. Lee So Yeun majored in fine art in South Korea and continued her studies at the Münster Kunst Academy in Germany. Her nomination for Düsseldorf’s “Emprise Art Prize” catalysed her recognition within the German art sector. By 2005, she earned the “Young Artist Award” from the Columbus Art Foundation in Ravensburg. From 2006, she collaborated exclusively with Düsseldorf’s esteemed Conrad Gallery, achieving international acclaim at renowned art fairs including the Cologne Art Colony in Germany, Show Off in Paris, ARCO in Madrid, and Scope and Pulse Art Fairs in New York. She has showcased solo exhibitions at Kunsthaus Essen (2014), Johyun Gallery (2014), and Space K (2013). She also participated in notable group exhibitions at the Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art (2018), Sejong Centre (2017), Amway Museum (2016), Pohang Museum of Steel Art (2015), and Gallery Lux (2015). Currently, her works are part of collections at TCB collection in Japan, Achenbach Art Consulting in Germany, the Columbus Foundation, and t.VIS.t Communication in Madrid, Spain.

Yun Hyong-Keun

A leading figure in Korea’s Dansaekhwa painting movement, Yun Hyong-keun was renowned for large-scale canvases that often feature meditative bands of umber and ultramarine paint. Yun began to develop his visually stark, technically complex style in the early 1970s; he was particularly inspired by Mark Rothko’s color field paintings, which he saw on a 1974 trip to New York. He rose to prominence in Korea and represented his country at the 1995 Venice Biennale. Featuring layers of paint on unprimed linen or mulberry bark paper, Yun’s evocative works have been internationally celebrated following his death in 2007. In 2018, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, hosted a major retrospective of the artist’s work that traveled to the Palazzo Fortuny in Venice. Yun’s work is included in the museum collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Chinati Foundation, the Glenstone, Tate Modern, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum.

Khairulddin Wahab

Khairulddin Wahab is a Singaporean artist who explores new ways of seeing nature and the environment through organic patterning, multilayered surfaces, and nonlinear spatial compositions. His practice unfolds along two interrelated axes: a painterly inquiry into the environmental history of Southeast Asia; and a critical reexamination of the visual frameworks inherited from colonialism. The landscapes that emerge in his paintings are places where the history of Southeast Asia, its ecological transformations, and the marks of human intervention converge and accumulate. Through them, Wahab reconsiders how land and nature have been perceived and governed under colonial expansion, maritime trade networks, and the economic systems they engendered. For Wahab, the process of making is itself the essential language of the work, taking precedence over the representation of any given image. He understands the painted surface as a site where time, labor, and material gather and settle, and draws inspiration from traditional modes of production across Southeast Asia, he builds up a richly stratified surface structure on the canvas.  By deliberately juxtaposing dense overlays of pigment with negative space, he visually records spectral narratives. These material procedures serve as a vital means of rendering visible the accumulated layers of natural environment and historical time. Wahab first drew international attention upon receiving the 2018 UOB Painting of the Year award. He studied fine arts at LASALLE College of the Arts in Singapore, and has participated in major international art events including Art SG, Asia NOW Paris, Abu Dhabi Art, and Biennale Jogja, and presented the large-scale installation The Lands Below the Winds (2024) in the PLATFORM section of Art SG 2025. Wahab’s works are held in the collections of the Singapore Art Museum, Kadist Art Foundation (Paris), Fondation Thalie (Belgium), X Museum (Beijing), and Salsali Private Museum (Dubai).

(Text and images courtesy of Johyun Gallery)