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Interview | Seoul and Edinburgh-based Artist Dakyo Oh
Dakyo Oh is an artist based in Seoul and Edinburgh who explores the relationship between nature and human existence through the primordial medium of soil. Her practice began with an interest in the cosmic depth and energy she perceived in the soil of a small flowerpot while tending to plants.
For Oh, soil is more than just a material; it is the foundation of a cycle where all life originates and returns, as well as a condensation of accumulated time. By layering and scraping materials such as soil, sand, and mineral pigments onto the canvas, she captures the rhythm of nature as it forms and dissolves shapes over time. Vivid scenes sensed in daily life, such as the traces of waves or the reflection of a forest on damp ground, are translated into a visual language that is both tactile and serene through the texture of earth. Recently, she has been observing the shifts in nature amidst climate change, delicately recording the finite beauty of life as it transforms and fades through the temporality and locality of soil. Through this process, Oh invites us to recover the natural senses we have lost and opens a window through which we can breathe with the world.
Oh received her BA in Plastic Arts from Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and her MFA in Oriental Painting from Seoul National University. Her major exhibitions include the solo shows Earthlike (Carin Gallery, 2024), Undine (Seojung Art, 2023), and am is are (Pipe Gallery, 2022). She has also participated in numerous group exhibitions, including Even on the Day the Waiting Ends (Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, 2025), and A Sonnet for the Earth (Seongnam Cube Art Museum, 2024).
Love all dying things II – VI, 2024, Soil, sand and pigment on hemp cloth, 194 x 131 cm (each), Courtesy of Seongnam Cube Art Museum Can you tell us about your background and how you started your artistic journey?
Looking back at my childhood, I remember myself spending hours alone in a quiet room with a view of the mountains. Whether I was playing the piano or painting, immersing myself in those emotions felt less like loneliness and more like an exciting journey. A particularly special encounter with art happened during elementary school, when my homeroom teacher, a master of intangible cultural heritage, taught us the Four Gracious Plants (Sagunja) every morning.
Around that time, I began to feel a deep sense of wonder at the fact that while I could see everyone else’s face, I could never directly see my own. This visual limitation of not being able to essentially face myself led to an exploration of the roots of existence. It brought me face-to-face with fundamental questions about memories before birth and the boundary between life and death. I have lived with a constant inquiry into where I came from, where I am going, and the very nature of being.
While studying art history and philosophy in college, I realized that these ontological explorations from my childhood, once dismissed as mere eccentricities, were actually the source of inspiration in the world of art. I became convinced that the act of questioning and this inherent disposition would serve as the foundation to sustain and expand my path as an artist, which has allowed me to continue my work to this day.
Even on the day when waiting ends, 2025, Installation view at Gyeonggji Museum of Modern Art, Ansan, Photo by Bak Hyongryol, Courtesy of GMoMA What inspired you to use earth as a material for thinking about life, time, and return?
Gardening is one of my hobbies, so I’ve always had many pots on my desk. One day, while repotting, I looked down into a pot filled only with soil, without a plant. The color and texture of the earth, which I had usually regarded as mere dust, felt exceptionally deep. I was struck by a sense of wonder at the invisible power of the earth that nurtures countless forms of life.
This thought connected with the biblical passage that humans were made of dust, leading me to see earth in a new light as the material of the Creator. I was more interested in the earth that contains a living spirit rather than the earth itself. Just as plants and animals return to the ground when life fades, I believe earth is a material with deep layers that embrace the beginning and end of all existence. Seeing how the earth silently accepts even the ugliness of the world, I felt a sense of anticipation for what unexpected things this material would produce. To me, earth is like a vessel for life. I began my work because I wanted to capture the invisible traces of the soul through this medium.
Reflective I, 2023, Sand, charcoal and pigment on hemp cloth, 194 x 131 cm, Courtesy of Artist You often work with sand, mineral pigments, charcoal, and other natural substances—how does your process unfold from beginning to end?
The work begins with sourcing soil from a specific region. I sift coarse soil by hand to prepare it evenly. Then I secure hemp cloth or linen onto a sturdy canvas or wooden panel as a support. For mixing materials, I use agyo, which is a traditional medium in East Asian painting. This natural adhesive extracted from animal bones firmly bonds the earth or pigments to the surface. I melt the glue on the prepared support and apply a thin mixture of soil, sand, charcoal, and pigments. Sometimes I scratch the surface with nails or spatulas, building up layers through this repeated process of painting and scratching.
Installation view at Eoul Art Center, 2025, Daegu, Courtesy of Eoul Art Center In your recent works, you respond to changes in nature shaped by climate conditions. How have these transformations influenced your perspective as an artist?
Actually, I did not start working on themes related to the climate crisis from the beginning. I simply loved nature and expressed the meaning and naturalness of natural materials, but receiving an exhibition proposal from a museum became a turning point. My work on nature naturally aligned with the discourse on the climate crisis, and this prompted me to contemplate the topic more deeply.
However, as an artist standing before this huge theme, I honestly felt a great sense of helplessness. I wondered what impact my work could have when everyone already knows about the crisis, and I worried about creating more waste. During that time, I happened to reread the poems of Yun Dong-ju, whom I have always admired. His heart, feeling ashamed of poems written easily during the tragic colonial era and vowing to embrace all dying things, resonated deeply with the small light within my helplessness. I felt that his sincere sensitivity reaching us today provides as much resonance as a struggle, even if it was not a direct visible action. Based on the inspiration from the poet’s attitude, I started the work titled Love All Dying Things, which became my own perspective on the climate crisis.
I consider recording the unique appearance of this era amidst a rapidly changing nature as a small mission, much like the poet writing his verses with a humble heart. With the thought that the nature we face now might be the last, I am archiving with a heart that treasures every moment in the face of an uncertain future.
Detail of Framed, 2025, Soil, sand and pigment on hemp cloth, frame, 196 x 99 cm, Courtesy of Eoul Art Center What do you hope people take away from your art when they experience it?
Since the experiences of viewers are infinite, I do not want to set a fixed answer. However, speaking from my experience, I learned a perspective to look at humans and nature more beautifully through the works of artists like Claude Monet, Agnes Martin, Rinko Kawauchi, and Rei Naito. Just as they opened a new window to the world for me, I hope my work serves as an opportunity for viewers to awaken a deep sensitivity in their lives. It would be my greatest fulfillment as an artist if I could open a perspective to face nature not just as a matter but as an intimacy with vitality beyond it.
Ansan-si, Gyeonggi-do, 2025, Earth from Gyeonggi-do on wooden panel, 181 x 227 cm, Photo by Bak Hyongryol. Courtesy of GMoMA, This work is commissioned by Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art in 2025 What projects are you currently working on, and what can we expect from you in the future?
Moving my base to the UK recently has had a great impact on my work. The nature I encounter here has a very different palette from Korea. Compared to Korea’s nature with distinct seasons and high saturation, this place has frequent rain and gradual weather changes, so plants have low saturation and deep earthy tones. That is why I am focusing on the original color of the soil rather than adding pigments these days. I am capturing the seasons of this place by borrowing the diverse raw colors of the soil itself.
At the same time, I am deeply considering ways to minimize carbon emissions in my creative process. While my work does not place a heavy burden on the environment, I still felt a lingering discomfort even when crafting wooden canvases. Based on these reflections, I am researching production methods that are carbon-neutral, such as recycling waste paper. I am striving to ensure that the act of documenting nature does not end up harming it.
Text and photo courtesy of Dakyo Oh
Website: https://www.dakyooh.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dakyo.oh/
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KOTARO NUKAGA Tennoz Presents what we told ourselves, a Solo Exhibition by Keita Morimoto
Night Shift, 2025, Acrylic and oil on linen, 162.0 x 130.3 cm KOTARO NUKAGA Tennoz is pleased to present Keita Morimoto’s solo exhibition ‘what we told ourselves‘ from January 17 to March 7, 2026.
Keita Morimoto has continuously referenced baroque paintings and early 20th-century American realism in his work, depicting artificial sources of illumination, such as streetlights, neon signs, and the glow from a vending machine in dramatic chiaroscuro. His juxtaposition of light and shadow pins down the ephemeral narratives hidden within everyday landscapes of the contemporary city. After two and a half years since his previous solo exhibition at KOTARO NUKAGA, ‘A Little Closer’—in which the artist captured a more intimate atmosphere by tightening the distance between himself and his subjects—Morimoto’s gaze once again turns to the street corners of the city, transforming seemingly unremarkable locations into sites where the complexities of contemporary society intersect.
The following text was written for this exhibition by Yumiko Nonaka, Senior Curator at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, the site of Morimoto’s 2025 solo exhibition ‘what has escaped us’.
Beneath a familiar light, 2026, Acrylic and oil on linen, 162.0 x 130.3 cm Keita Morimoto moved to Canada when he was 16 years old, and returned to Japan after turning 30, in 2021—during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since his return, his principal motifs have been the nocturnal city and the young people who gather there. His paintings all draw from photographs of scenes from the night, dawn, and twilight that he has personally accumulated through fieldwork. At times, he depicts scenes from the city as they are, while at other times, he aggregates elements from several different locations to create a single space. Within these settings, he selects models from among photographs he has taken of close friends, and places them within his compositions, bringing real landscapes and people together like a cut-and-paste collage. The artificial lights in the city illuminate the young people who spend their nights as they please, while phone booths, now dwindling in number, and vending machines emit a glow in the dark and appear to float within the darkness. The human figures and machines are zoned in on as entities that both seem to hold a certain energy within the night.
Morimoto’s paintings, with their realistic depictions and seemingly perfect compositions, may seem impeccable—and yet, they evoke a lingering eeriness. The seemingly perfect, yet somehow unnatural paintings he renders have continued to occupy my mind. I believe this is precisely why his work is so appealing.
Morimoto has said that he seeks to create a source of unease in his works—portraying people who could potentially be there, but are not in reality. He has also spoken about always feeling a dissonance between himself and the places he occupies, and how this lies at the root of his perspective and artistic practice. For Morimoto, who moved to a place with a different language and culture at the formative age of 16, a sense of discordance and misalignment must have been constant, and after spending many years away from Japan, he must have inevitably felt a degree of disjunction in his everyday life upon returning to Japanese society. This personal experience of difference undoubtedly influences his work, more fundamentally, the artist’s own disposition—that he by no means pursues stability—also seems to significantly inform his creations.
Where the light disappears, 2026, Acrylic and oil on linen, 130.3 x 162.0 cm Morimoto decided to leave Japan when entering high school because he felt fear and hopelessness in the predictable future of going to high school, then university, and eventually employment in the same country. When he closed the 15-year chapter of his life in Canada, he says that it was because his future there had also begun to feel predictable. Humans usually seek stability and comfort, but there is nothing usual about Morimoto. His works are driven by an exploration of and curiosity toward a world beyond the scope of his own imagination: a self as yet unknown, a future as yet unimagined, a world as yet unseen.
The sense of dissonance, of something being slightly off about his surroundings, led to Morimoto’s discovery of the concept of “heterotopia,” proposed by Michel Foucault—a significant theme within the artist’s work. Heterotopias describe specific spaces that exist in reality but function as counter-sites within dominant social norms. Foucault provides several specific spaces as examples, among which his discussions of the mirror and the boat are particularly fascinating when considering Morimoto’s work.
With a mirror, everything it reflects is unreal. This illusory image enables the viewer to grasp themselves and their surrounding world within a place where they are, properly speaking, absent. It is an unreal space, or utopia, and at the same time an “other” space, or heterotopia. Mirrors not only exist in reality but also act upon the real world through the virtual space beyond them. The “I” who sees them grasps their own position and the surrounding space, thereby reconstituting themselves. Morimoto’s paintings, too—like mirrors—make the viewer aware of that fictional self, the self that might have been.
Moreover, at the end of Foucault’s text on heterotopias, he states that, a boat is “the greatest reserve of the imagination,” describing it as a “…the greatest reserve of the imagination” and “a floating morsel of space, a placeless place—that lives by itself, that is closed in on itself and is at the same time delivered to the infinity of the sea and [goes] from port to port, from run to run… in search of that which is most precious…（1984）.*1” Morimoto, as if floating in a vast sea, drifts within the city, depicting places that have no place, the unseen, and the moments that pass by unnoticed, creating alternate realities by deliberately failing to fully grasp the world. Like a boat, Morimoto’s paintings become a reserve of imagination.
The peculiar sense of dissonance I have felt upon encountering Morimoto’s paintings stems from the deliberate gaps and margins that he consciously creates. These simultaneously prompt an experience of sympathy or exchange between the viewer and the work. The meticulous rendering of landscapes, the realistic depiction of figures, the dramatic play of light—though the scenes appear as if based on specific stories or events, his paintings contain nothing of the sort. Morimoto’s works do not seek to convey anything in particular; rather, they exert an influence on the viewer, prompting the subject—the “I”—to project themselves onto the painting. And so, we begin to imagine the story of an “other” self.
*1 Michel Foucault, “Des espaces autres,” Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité 5 (1984): 46–49; English translation by Ben Cagan (unpublished).
Stories we told ourselves, 2026, Acrylic and oil on linen, 218.2 x 291.0 cm Yumiko Nonaka（Senior Curator, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa）
This exhibition, ‘what we told ourselves‘, features large-scale paintings alongside Morimoto’s first venture into installation art. The exhibition space extends his work into the real world, aiming to offer a more immersive experience of the sensation he portrays: that of having deliberately failed to fully grasp the world. As viewers engage with the work, they may get the sense that something is escaping them. This experience also exposes the stories and fictions we construct and in which we believe as a way of filling the gaps of what we’ve overlooked—“what we told ourselves.”
Venue
1F TERRADA Art Complex II, 1-32-8Artists
Keita MorimotoExhibition Dates
January 17 – March 7, 2026Gallery Hours
Tuesday – Saturday | 11:30 AM – 6 PMWebsite
https://kotaronukaga.comInstagram
https://www.instagram.com/kotaro_nukaga/Contact
info@kotaronukaga.comAbout the Artist
Keita Morimoto（born 1990, Osaka, Japan）is a Japanese artist renowned for his cityscapes and portraits. He immigrated to Canada in 2006, earned his BFA from OCAD University in 2012, and returned to Japan in 2021. Now based in Tokyo, Morimoto engages deeply with the techniques and themes of Baroque lighting, early 20th-century American Realism, and pre-modern Genre Painting. By referencing these historical movements, he reimagines contemporary urban life, transforming ordinary streets into extraordinary narratives. Through the symbolic use of light, he merges its sacred and natural connotations with the stark realities of consumerism and industrial culture, creating works that resonate with both historical depth and modern complexity. Morimoto’s work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto Canada, K 11 Musea, Powerlong Art Museum, Art Gallery of Peterborough, The Power Plant, and Fort Wayne Museum of Art. His pieces are part of the permanent collections at the Shiga Museum of Art, Arts Maebashi, High Museum of Art, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, and ICA Miami.
(Text and images courtesy of KOTARO NUKAGA Tennoz)
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PKM Gallery Presents Seoul Syntax, a Solo Exhibition by Bek Hyunjin
Poster credit: PKM Gallery PKM Gallery is pleased to present Seoul Syntax, a solo exhibition by multidisciplinary artist Bek Hyunjin (b. 1972), on view from February 4 to March 21 at the annex. As an artist, musician, and actor, Bek has cultivated a diverse and boundary-defying practice. This marks his first solo show at the gallery in five years since the 2021 exhibition Beyond Words. The exhibition brings together recent jangji (traditional Korean mulberry paper) paintings, drawings, and video set against the backdrop of Seoul, the city where the artist was born and raised.
Bek has spent his life navigating the gallery, the stage, and the screen, with Seoul serving as his home base. Embracing his own evolution alongside the city’s metamorphosis, Bek began several years ago to leave traces of his experiences and feelings. The works in Seoul Syntax are the visual results of this process. Notably, this exhibition shares a thematic pulse with his 2025 album, Seoul Syntax. While the album recorded Seoul as ‘the audible’ through his technique, senses, and heart, the works in this exhibition document the city as ‘the visible.’
갈팡질팡 Wavering, 2025, Oil and spray enamel on paper, 213 x 150 cm, Courtesy of the artist and PKM Gallery, Photo © Sangtae Kim / Fondation d’entreprise
HermèsThe paintings and drawings in Seoul Syntax exemplify Bek’s refined formal language—one that achieves fullness through a process of emptying. With titles such as Winter, Spring, and Early Summer, his paintings evoke seasonal landscapes that mirror the artist’s spontaneous gestures as he navigates moments of Conundrum, Wavering, and stillness before finding a new Departure. His PW drawing series may initially appear as enigmatic codes (password; PW) titled using a minimalist system of production years and sequence numbers. They reveal a profound economy of means, where lines and color planes are rendered with a raw immediacy, stripped of pretense. Through his own unique syntax, Bek filters the complexities of contemporary Seoul—a place where stability and precariousness, intimacy and alienation, and triumph and failure coexist in a delicate balance.
Screening alongside these works is Light 23, a multidisciplinary piece that functions as a video work, music video, and short film. The project features actress Han Yeri from Minari (2020) and cinematographer Hong Kyung-pyo from Parasite (2019). Filmed in a single take on the outskirts of Seoul at sunset, the video romantically captures the shifting weather and the full spectrum of human emotions. Mirroring the lyrics of the song Light23—which describe the sun, the other, and the three rays of light that dwell within the self— the work expands the static imagery of his paintings into a temporal, cinematic narrative. By unfolding Bek’s multifaceted vision of Seoul like a panorama, the exhibition offers an immersive engagement with the artist’s deep-seated connection to the city.
겨울 Winter, 2025, Oil on paper, 213 x 150 cm, Courtesy of the artist and PKM Gallery, Photo: Paul Salveson Bek Hyunjin has held numerous solo exhibitions in various places, including Korea, the USA, the UK, Germany, Italy, and Taiwan. Bek has participated in group exhibitions at major art institutions worldwide, including the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul, Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul, Ilmin Museum of Art in Seoul, Art Sonje Center in Seoul, Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum in Shanghai, Kunsthalle Wien in Vienna, and Vestfossen Kunstlaboratorium in Vestfossen. In 2017, Bek was chosen as a sponsored artist for the ‘Korea Art Prize’ of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea. He is also active as a singer-songwriter—both as a member of the pioneering indie band Uhuhboo Project, the project band Bahngbek, and Bek Hyunjin C—and as an actor, with appearances in films The Day He Arrives, Gyeongju, and Broker, as well as the series Moving and Taxi Driver. Bek continues to expand his wide-ranging artistic practice.
Venue
40, Samcheong-ro 7-gil, Jongno-gu, Seoul | T. 02 734 9467Artists
Bek HyunjinExhibition Dates
February 4 – March 21, 2026Gallery Hours
Tuesday – Sunday | 10 AM – 6 PMWebsite
https://www.pkmgallery.comInstagram
https://www.instagram.com/pkmgalleryContact
info@pkmgallery.com(Text and images courtesy of PKM Gallery)
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Interview | New York-based Artist Mitchell Poon
Mitchell Poon (b. Brooklyn, New York) is an artist working primarily with drawing, printmaking, and bookbinding. His work is inspired by his experience growing up a third generation Chinese American, a personal mythology, Chinese symbolism and numerology, and his family’s archive. His compositions reference symbolism and numerology to add additional layers of meaning to his narratives, as well as explore themes of temporality, longing, grief, speculation, and mortality.
He first began printmaking after studying lithography at Cornell University, where he received his BA. He has since studied printmaking at other institutions such as the Manhattan Graphics Center and the School of Visual Arts. Currently pursuing his MFA at Rhode Island School of Design, his recent research interests include tessellations, the intersection between sculpture and printmaking, and the decontextualization of imagery.
Bargaining, 2025, 100 handmade, linocut envelopes and inserts encased in a handmade box; linocut and letterpress printing, 5 x 6 x 3.75 in (box) Can you tell us about your background and how you started your artistic journey?
I was interested in art from a young age, and a core memory of mine is having my parents draw with me every night before going to bed. I had the opportunity to participate in several arts programs growing up, and attended LaGuardia High School in New York City, where I studied fine art for four years. I then went to college at Cornell University, where I earned my bachelor’s degree in economics and French. While there, I took my first lithography class and fell in love with printmaking. However, I did not initially pursue an artistic career and instead worked in a variety of corporate roles in sales, marketing, and account management in the advertising technology industry. I never really saw myself pursuing a career in the arts, but after my father passed away from lung cancer in 2020, I decided to transition away from the technology field to reconnect with printmaking. I began taking classes and studio monitoring at the Manhattan Graphics Center and eventually decided to pursue my Master of Fine Arts at Rhode Island School of Design, where I am currently a graduate student.
Bok Choy Birdies, 2023, Photoplate Lithography, 14 x 11 in, Edition of 23 How do you stay inspired and motivated to create new work?
I constantly find inspiration from my personal life and the world around me. Learning new things, connecting with people, and researching and studying history helps me refresh my practice and generate new ideas to explore. I have also taught workshops and classes on printmaking techniques, and I find a lot of fulfillment and inspiration from seeing how other artists think and create. My current practice looks at the family archive, and I find that analyzing and re-examining the objects and information in my possession always presents new questions and ideas for me to explore. Additionally, I find that being willing to experiment and reiterate on older ideas helps breathe new life into my artistic practice and inspires me to continue creating.
Mothholes I, 2024, Silkscreen and mezzotint on BFK Rives, 14 x 14 in How do your personal experiences and identity influence your art?
My personal experiences and identity are deeply ingrained in the work that I make. Two pivotal experiences for me were the loss of my father to cancer, and my experience growing up as a third generation Chinese American. Losing my father opened my eyes to the fragility of life and brevity of time, and has heavily influenced the themes that I currently explore in my practice. My heritage and experiences growing up Chinese in America have informed my visual language, specifically the symbols and iconography I incorporate in my artwork. These two facets of my life have also shaped my life philosophy and are thus ever-present when I am making new work or interpreting and manifesting my ideas.
Mothholes II, 2024, Silkscreen and mezzotint on BFK Rives, 14 x 14 in What challenges have you faced as an artist, and how have you overcome them?
While I had studied art throughout my upbringing, I think that my long and varied journey to a career in the arts has made it sometimes difficult for me to feel like a “true artist”. For a long time, my identity was not as an artist but perhaps something art adjacent, and this resulted in bouts of imposter syndrome and insecurity, especially when I first quit working in the technology industry. However, I have come to realize that the title of artist is not something that anyone bestows upon you, and that it is rather something that you get to decide for yourself. I now no longer feel insecure about my journey and instead view my experiences as the foundation for my practice and unique perspectives as a contemporary artist and maker. I have a lot more confidence in the work that I make, the conversations I want to spark with my work, as well as my position and role as an artist.
Genealogical Jiapus, 2025, Artist books; puretch and letterpress printing on BFK Rives, 4.5 x 5.75 x 0.75 in (closed) What role do you believe art plays in social and cultural change?
I think that art can be a catalyst for social and cultural change by presenting new perspectives and encouraging an audience to think about things differently. Art can serve as a portal into realities that may be different or similar to our own, and I believe it can help people learn about, understand, and relate to one another. Inherently, the act of making brings forth change into the world, either by constructive or destructive means. Thus, I believe that art in any form will always affect change, and this could be through sparking new conversations, inspiring new viewpoints, and providing opportunities to experience realities that would be otherwise inaccessible.
Suspended Hare, 2025, Aluminum plate and photo lithography on BFK Rives paper, 15 x 22 in, Edition of 7 What projects are you currently working on, and what can we expect from you in the future?
I am currently working on a couple of large-scale projects in relation to my family’s archive, specifically exploring the synchronicities between the photographic archives of different generations of family members. Part of this work includes tessellations of different materials, including cyanotype printed fabric, Shrinky Dink plastic, and polyester printing plates. I am also working on several lithographs and trying to figure out how best to combine my interests in printmaking, sculpture, and installation. In the future, I hope to continue evolving my practice and being able to share my work with the public. Perhaps the major thing you can expect from me in the near-future will be the completion of my thesis over the next few months—please stay tuned for that!
Text & photo courtesy of Mitchell Poon
Portrait photo by Alex Wen Website: https://www.mitchellpoon.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mitchlpoon/
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Interview | New York-based Artist Jasphy Zheng
Jasphy Zheng is a multidisciplinary artist whose work examines the invisible structures shaping everyday life: beliefs, rituals, and unspoken rules that quietly govern how we relate to one another. Through participatory frameworks involving both objects and non-objects, she creates situations where meaning emerges through collective presence and negotiated interaction. Her projects often begin with a simple prompt or invitation and unfold into temporary collectives, subtle exchanges, or open-ended improvisations. Centering language, agency, and care as core materials, her practice resists fixed outcomes in favor of shared attention and relational complexity. Zheng holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and is currently pursuing her MFA at Columbia University.
Stories from the Room (Shanghai), 2020 -2021, Site-specific installation with copper, high-density sponge, office furniture, computer, printer, paper, stationary, plants, museum staff, Size variable; Courtesy of the artist and Rockbund Art Museum Can you tell us about your background and how you started your artistic journey?
I didn’t grow up with formal art training, and for a long time I never imagined becoming an artist. I came to art around the age of eighteen, during a period of existential upheaval following the loss of a mentor I deeply admired. At the time, it felt necessary to change my life’s direction in order to hold and move through that grief.
Around that same period, I encountered artworks that profoundly shifted me. They didn’t simply impress me aesthetically, they unsettled my values and moved me emotionally. They showed me that art has the capacity to reshape how we see and relate to the world at a fundamental level. Art felt non-derivative, something foundational to human experience rather than an industry or a role.
For the first time, I could imagine committing myself to a single pursuit over many lifetimes. I decided to become an artist not because it felt appealing or adventurous, but because it felt necessary.
Stories from the Room (Shanghai), 2020 -2021, Site-specific installation with copper, high-density sponge, office furniture, computer, printer, paper, stationary, plants, museum staff, Size variable; Courtesy of the artist and Rockbund Art Museum
How do you stay inspired and motivated to create new work?I don’t really think of my practice as relying on inspiration in the sense of sudden flashes or moments of genius. For me, art is a socially grounded practice, so it’s inevitably shaped by everyday life and by how we relate to the world around us.
If one stays curious, about others, about systems, about oneself, there are always reflections, opinions, tensions, or questions that naturally arise. Those become the starting point for my work. Motivation comes less from waiting to feel inspired and more from paying close attention: to conversations, to misunderstandings, to small shifts in how people speak, listen, or relate to one another. Making work for me is responding to what is already present.
Stories from the Room (Kitakyushu), 2020, Site-specific installation with paper, folders, storage boxes, office furniture, computer, printer, stationary, museum staff, Size variable; Courtesy of the artist and CCA Kitakyushu
Your practice often engages with the “failure of communication.” What led you to explore these moments of misunderstanding and what they reveal?If I’m honest, my interest in the failure of communication comes from a constant struggle to feel connected, to feel understood and seen by others, especially by the people I love and care about. It’s perhaps one of the most fundamental needs we share, yet it’s often far more fragile than we expect.
Communication, understanding, empathy—all of these require effort, vulnerability, and a willingness to risk misunderstanding, and even then, success is never guaranteed. Dzongsar Rinpoche once said that there is no such thing as communication, only successful misunderstandings and unsuccessful ones.
Moments of misunderstanding reveal how much care and labor are required to stay connected, both to ourselves and to others. I’m drawn to these moments as sites where intimacy, power, and longing become visible. My work reflects on how connection is constantly negotiated, and how easily it can slip into misalignment, silence, or failure, often without us noticing until something is at stake.
In that sense, the “failure” of communication isn’t a dead end for me, it’s where the emotional and relational truths of human experience begin to surface.
Stories from the Room (Addis Ababa), 2021, Public project; Courtesy of the artist How do you approach exhibiting your work? What are your goals when showing your art in public spaces?
I’m not a studio-based artist, most of my works are site-specific. They’re created in response to the physical space, cultural context, and the institutional or structural conditions of exhibition spaces, whether those are museums, galleries, alternative spaces, or public sites.
When I begin envisioning a work, I’m already thinking about how it will be encountered, how it might be perceived, navigated, or even interacted with in a particular context. The exhibition isn’t a container for the work, it’s part of the work’s logic.
My goal in showing work publicly is modest but demanding: I hope the work might spark curiosity, or better yet, interrupt the automatic process through which assumptions form, even if that interruption appears as discomfort or confusion. It’s a big goal, and I can’t believe I’m saying it out loud, but I’ve experienced artworks that have done this for me, and that keeps the possibility alive.
Stories from the Room (Bor), 2022, Library permanent collection, group reading; Courtesy of the artist How do you hope audiences encounter the project—as readers, contributors, witnesses, or something else?
I enjoy creating projects with multiple roles, where boundaries remain fluid and open to reexamination. In my work, there are first audiences, second audiences, contributors, participants, but also witnesses, guardians, believers, and doubters (or critics). Each role is essential, and together they give the work its complexity and texture.
These roles often shift between the audience, the hosting institution, and myself. I’m deeply interested in this triangular relationship and the power dynamics it produces, how authority, authorship, and responsibility circulate rather than remain fixed.
Loop Song, 2023; Social participatory project with sound, improvisation, performance; Courtesy of the artist What projects are you currently working on, and what can we expect from you in the future?
I’m currently developing several new projects. One is a situational work that explores proximity, how physical closeness frames and alters relationships between individuals. Proximity is a slippery condition that sits between strangeness and familiarity, producing a façade of intimacy or distance shaped by temporary binding and shared circumstances.
Another project I’m excited about responds to the classic psychological test of the tree, the house, and the person. It aligns closely with my interest in self-reflection and the paradox of the self as both the most familiar and the most elusive figure we know. The project asks: what is the self, who is the self, and how willing are we to truly get to know it? And perhaps more importantly—are we capable of doing so?
Over the past two years, I’ve also gone through a phase of experimenting with new mediums and learning the “languages” of each, somewhat ironic given my long-term interest in immaterial forms of making. I have a bad habit of needing to try something fully before deciding to reject it.
Moving forward, I feel confident trusting myself to adopt whatever medium a project calls for, without feeling the need to commit to any single form. What matters most to me is staying responsive to questions, to contexts, to the spaces between people where meaning quietly takes shape.
Text & photo courtesy of Jasphy Zheng
Website: http://jasphyzheng.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jasphy/?hl=en
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Interview | Beijing-Based Artist Wu Yumo
Wu Yumo (武雨墨), born in 1995 in Inner Mongolia, China, currently resides and works in Beijing, China. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography from the Rhode Island School of Design (2021, with Honors) and a Master of Arts in Photography from the École cantonale d’art de Lausanne (ECAL) in Switzerland (2023, with Mention Excellent).
As an artist dedicated to photography, the camera becomes a living extension of Wu’s own body—its sensory faculties constantly interfacing with the vision of her naked eye. She disrupts the traditional logic of photographic techniques, allowing perception to become a method in itself. Through this, those elusive, trembling, and subtly glitching moments of reality are precisely captured, and reconstructed into a new reality that strays from the familiar world.
Eyes Unfold Distances, 2025, Installation view Can you tell us about your background and how you started your artistic journey?
I was born in a small town called Yakeshi in Inner Mongolia, China. I lived in Beijing from the age of two and later went on to study photography in the United States and Switzerland. Art played a distant role in my upbringing; I had no formal training in fine art, never learned to draw, and never imagined I would become an artist.
Cameras always held a faint, imperceptible, yet powerful allure for me. My father kept a Nikon camera in the corner of a wardrobe when I was little. Whenever I was home alone, I would quietly slip inside, open the box, turn the dials, and feel the edges of the camera in the dark. Strangely, I never pressed the shutter. I remember this vividly because it was the moment I first became aware of ‘photography’—not through what a lens captures, but through my silent coexistence with the camera in the dark. This was the beginning of my obsession.
I have been playing with cameras since I was young, always approaching them with a sense of playfulness. In my twenties, this gradually developed into a serious engagement with photography. The impulse to create feels like a force surging from within, continually driving me to produce new images. Deep down, I have a strong desire to explore new meanings through photography. My work is closely tied to visual perception—what I see, what I want to see, what the viewer sees, and the intricate relationships formed between them.
Eyes Unfold Distances, 2025, Installation view You describe the camera as an extension of your body. How does this perspective shape the way you engage with your subjects and environment?
Compared to what the camera sees, I place more trust in the perception of the eyes. I often think about how we experience the world through two eyes, while a camera relies on a single lens to look, attempting to stand in for our binocular vision. No matter how hard it tries to reconstruct a sense of three-dimensional space, I believe there is always a distance between the image produced by the camera and the world as it is experienced by the naked eye.
Eyes are the boundary between my body and the outside world. Bodily perception is extremely natural, and we do not see with the same precision as a camera. I was deeply concerned with how photographic technique enables the camera to see. But now I am more sensually aware to the origin of all action—the act of looking. When I photograph, I prefer to let my body and gaze enter the surroundings, narrowing my attention down to the act of looking, rather than allowing the camera to lead my eyes. Photography is often discussed in terms of its ability to capture the “decisive moment,” but to me, the true decisive moment occurs when something first strikes the eyes and the inner self, before flowing into the camera held in the hands.
I train myself to experience first with my eyes, allowing the use of the camera to follow naturally. For example, in the series Talks on Trees, I set aside both my glasses and the camera’s viewfinder, deliberately returning my vision to a state of blur while photographing. I believe that this intentional deviation from technical precision brings me closer to the fleeting, embodied sensations of that moment.
Tree Thunder II, from the series Talks on Trees, 2024, Archival inkjet print, 125 x 156 cm In what ways do you define perception as a method in photography?
I believe that photography is a tool through which vision evokes perception and sensation. Although photography is now central to everyday life, it still retains a magical potential to challenge how we perceive the world. The photographic gaze is crucial.
Pixel Night Rain 02, from the series Photography Writing, 2025, Archival Inkjet Print, 70.2 x 56.2 cm How do your experiences in different cultural contexts—including China, Germany, and your education in the U.S. and Switzerland—influence your practice?
I see my experience between these different cities as a transition across boundaries—from the gentle to the radical. It is a process of constant reflection and reconsideration, sometimes even starting over to challenge the very nature of photography itself.
I found that I need a quiet environment and a slower pace of life to truly engage with photography. My path naturally led me to smaller cities such as Providence and Renens, where the slower pace allowed me to focus deeply on my work. Although both experiences centered on photography, the two institutions offered different academic philosophies.
During my time at RISD, I spent much time alone with the medium—working with film in the darkroom and participating in critique sessions that were relatively gentle. While the environment at ECAL was practical, intense and strict. The incisive feedback from my instructors pushed me to constantly examine and elevate my work. This experience made me realize that maintaining a serious, critical approach in professional practice is, at its core, a form of respect for the medium itself. It is through this ongoing process of challenge, friction, and dialogue that I discovered a creative state that truly fascinates me. I am deeply grateful to the mentors at both institutions who shaped, encouraged, and challenged my thinking: Steve Smith, Alex Strada, Milo Keller, Bruno Ceschel, and Clément Lambelet. They helped me a lot.
Inside the Eye, from the series The Rupture of Vision, 2025, 118 x 147.5 cm What challenges have you faced as an artist, and how have you overcome them?
I wouldn’t say I’ve overcome any challenges. Sometimes I feel frustrated because the potential of the expanded photographic medium still exists on the edge in the world. However, my attitude toward photography has never changed and remains daring.
What projects are you currently working on, and what can we expect from you in the future?I am currently working on new pictures in my darkroom. I want to be attentive and concentrate on my hands and the surface of the photographic paper. The darkroom process ties these two together. Through this process, I study magic, illusions, ambiguity, accidents, and disturbances in photography.
Text & photo courtesy of Wu Yumo
Website: https://wuyumo.net/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wuyuumo/?hl=en
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Interview | Chiba-Based Artist Law Yuk-mui
Law Yuk-mui is a multidisciplinary artist and art educator who lives and works between Chiba, Japan, and Hong Kong. Working primarily through expanded cinema, she adopts methodologies of field research to intervene in everyday urban spaces. Her practice attends to the physical traces of history, bodily memory, the marks of time, and the operations of power embedded within geographic space.
Sound serves as an anchor in Law’s work. Her work explores the political and cultural rhetoric of sound and acoustic memory, as well as the orchestration and interplay between sound, text, and visuals.
Law Yuk-mui was shortlisted for the Foundwork Artist Prize in 2021. She has also received the Awards for Young Artist (Media Art category) at the Hong Kong Arts Development Awards, and the Excellence Award (Media Art category) at the ifva Awards in 2018.
Lilt of Yu, 2026, Single-channel video, 4K, colour, stereo; 12 min 20 sec; Photo credit: Law Yuk Mui Can you tell us about your background and how you started your artistic journey?
I actually began my artistic career quite late. My first solo exhibition, Victoria East (2017), was presented at Videotage in Hong Kong when I was thirty-five. Prior to that, I worked for five years at soundpocket, an independent sound art organisation, where I was responsible for The Library, an online public sound archive. Through this role, I had the opportunity to learn from many established sound artists, including Samson Young, Aiko Suzuki, and Yannick Dauby.
This experience deeply nurtured my practice. Beyond learning field-recording techniques, I began to understand how the senses align. Trained initially as a visual artist, I once perceived the world primarily through vision, rarely approaching it through listening. As a result, my early video works contained no sound, partly because I did not yet know how to work with this medium.
I gradually began incorporating field recordings into my work. Since Song of the Exile in 2022, sound and listening have become a way for me to approach history. Over time, this has grown into a sustained interest in acoustic memory and the political and cultural rhetoric of sound.
Lilt of Yu, 2026, Single-channel video, 4K, colour, stereo; 12 min 20 sec; Photo credit: Law Yuk Mui What is your creative process like? Do you follow a routine or work spontaneously?
In Hong Kong, I often described myself as not a studio-based artist. I needed to leave the studio in order to develop my work, and as a result, much of my earlier practice involved extensive fieldwork.
Since 2022, I have relocated to Japan. I don’t have a driver’s licence here, so I now spend much more time working in my home studio. This shift has enabled new forms of experimentation, such as using archival images as input for AI-generated sound.
I usually begin working at nine in the morning and continue until four in the afternoon. Sometimes, I return to work again in the evening. I build my work slowly, accumulating it day by day. This is how I work now. I believe that time is a mother, and that work needs time to be distilled, to accumulate, and to take shape.
Song of the Exile, 2022, HD video, colour, stereo; 11 min 43 sec; Photo credit: Law Yuk Mui
A sailor trained in art uses ready-made objects to foley the sound of “rust chipping” on an ocean freighter—the hammering of rust before a new coat of paint is appliedYou often work through “expanded cinema.” What does this form allow you to explore that traditional film or single-channel video cannot?
My primary concern is how audiences perceive and engage with my work. In a single-channel format, viewers are positioned in front of a screen and guided through a largely linear narrative. Multi-channel video allows for multiple narrative threads and shifting points of view, while expanded cinema allows me to work with the full space, inviting viewers into spatial and temporal encounters that go beyond the screen itself.
In Song of the Exile (2022), I treated the exhibition space as a hybrid of a film studio and a cinema, staging the mise-en-scène live in front of the audience. Viewers were free to move through the space, as performative bodies, sculptural elements, and moving images charged the environment, allowing the work to remain deliberately open and unstable. This openness can be challenging both for viewers and for myself as an artist.
Song of the Exile, 22, opening performance; Photo credit: Law Yuk Mui Your work intervenes in the mundane rhythms of the city. What inspired you to use everyday spaces as sites of artistic inquiry?
Rhythm is not only found in cities; rural landscapes also have their own rhythms, and each body carries its own rhythm as well. For one of my recent video works, I drew the subtitle from Rain and the Rhinoceros by Thomas Merton, in which he reflects on listening to rain while alone in a hermitage, contrasting this natural sound with the engineered rhythms of modern life.
This text resonated deeply with me and recalls a way of seeing informed by Landscape Theory (風景論), articulated in the late 1960s by the Japanese photographer Nakahira Takuma. This perspective rejects the neutrality of the everyday environment and instead foregrounds how seemingly ordinary spaces are shaped by hidden structures of power, violence, and instability.
River Atlas, 2021, Four-channel video and sound installation at Two Temple Place, London, 4K, colour; LED monitors, silver reflective glass, glass bottles, earphones; 20 min; Photo credit: Two Temple Place What challenges have you faced as an artist, and how have you overcome them?
One of the ongoing challenges in my practice is sustaining long-term, research-based creation. My work often unfolds over extended periods and is not easily supported by sales alone. As I am not currently represented by a gallery, I primarily sustain my practice through commissions, institutional collaborations, and project-based funding.
In recent years, working between Hong Kong and Japan across different cultural and administrative contexts, including visa status and funding eligibility, has encouraged me to rely less on government funding and to seek support through alternative funding sources.
Pastiche, 2019, Video triptych with six-channel audio, HD video, colour; 22 min; Photo credit: Art Tower Mito, Japan What projects are you currently working on, and what can we expect from you in the future?
My current project, Lilt of Yu, is a collaboration with dancer Joseph Lee and percussionist Lam Yip. The choreographic concept draws from Yubu (禹步), a Daoist stepping pattern associated with celestial order. Interwoven with taiko drums and cloud gongs, the work forms a sonic ritual space that explores thresholds between the human and the animistic world.
Situated between Hong Kong and Japan, my practice has become increasingly attentive to liminality and thresholds. In dialogue with my ongoing interest in orchestrating relationships between sound, text, and image, this focus continues to shape the direction of my work.
Text & photo courtesy of Law Yuk-mui
Website: https://www.lawyukmui.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawyukmui/?hl=en
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AOD Museum Presents a Group Exhibition: The Collapse Manual
Poster credit: AOD Museum This exhibition marks the second chapter in the ongoing series titled 《The Collapse Manual》. Rather than contemplating an end, the project proposes a gaze beyond collapse, imagining the forms of existence that may newly emerge from what has fallen apart.
Systems we perceive as broken do not remain in stasis. Instead, they transform their structures in response to changing environments, continuing to operate in altered ways. Within such modes of operation, what appears to be a foretold ending may in fact signal the beginning of a new scene unfolding under different conditions.
The participating artists summon and layer preexisting forms, organizing a yet-to-be-defined order of images. Here, collapse functions not as rupture or loss, but as a latent force that prompts the search for new possibilities.
Curated by Juhyun Oh, the exhibition will be presented at AOD Museum. 《The Collapse Manual: Ep.2》 features seven artists: Daeuk Kim, Wunggyu Park, Meekyoung Shin, Jaehong Ahn, Omyo Cho, Miryu Yoon, and Yongbin Lee.
Installation view of The Collapse Manual, Courtesy of AOD Museum Exhibition Introduction
Text by Hyunjeoung Moon
The word ‘collapse’ comes to mind again. While one might imagine a massive disaster where the world crumbles in an instant, the sensation of collapse is already being felt here and now, not in some distant future. Surrounded by technology, with the value of labor transformed, systems operating blindly toward efficiency, and nature destroyed, we routinely experience continuous crumbling. This collapse is not a sudden event that happened one day, but rather a state that has slowly accumulated within our senses. The feeling of anxiety makes us look back at the past and present while simultaneously imagining a future that has not yet arrived. Perhaps imagining the future is no different from looking back at ourselves in the present.
This exhibition is the second in a series planned under the title The Collapse Manual. This title, which could be literally translated as ‘The Collapse Manual,’ proposes looking not at the end, but at what comes after collapse. While the previous exhibition depicted the landscape after collapse, this exhibition imagines new beings that could emerge from the ruins. Even amidst collapse, where everything seems to have ended, unexpected vitality and change can be captured. Overlapping this are the possibilities of what will settle in the ruins and the potential for generations bridging the past to the future.
Installation view of The Collapse Manual, Courtesy of AOD Museum Systems we perceive as broken rarely remain static. Instead, they adapt to their environment by altering their form and continuing to function in different ways. This process of adapting to change while passing on the previous to the next generation resembles heredity. This flow repeats across species, cultures, histories, and civilizations as a whole, inevitably generating variation. Moments that seem like a foretold apocalypse can be the beginning of a new scene unfolding under different conditions. The exhibition follows the subtle signs of change that prompt us to imagine a future we have yet to witness, opening up another possibility beyond collapse.
There are moments when seemingly unrelated images overlap, forming life like shapes, prompting us to imagine they might be future beings. This imagination relates less to inventing something entirely new and more to rearranging and connecting images and forms transmitted from the past at the present moment. Participating artists summon and layer existing forms, organizing an as yet unestablished order of images within them. Here, collapse functions not as disconnection or loss, but as a latent force enabling images to form relationships and acquire meaning. Rather than restoring the past, they seek the next possibility within the conditions of repeated collapse. By capturing phenomena we have passed through and placing them upon another timeline, they will make us sense the present anew from a future vantage.
Installation view of The Collapse Manual, Courtesy of AOD Museum Venue
AOD Museum (1F & B1, Samjung Bldg, 4 Zandari-ro 3-gil, Mapo-gu, Seoul, Korea)Artists
Daeuk Kim, Wunggyu Park, Meekyoung Shin, Jaehong Ahn, Omyo Cho, Miryu Yoon, and Yongbin LeeExhibition Dates
January 30 – March 17, 2026Gallery Hours
Tuesday – Sunday | 10 AM – 6 PMWebsite
https://www.aodmuseum.comInstagram
https://www.instagram.com/aodmuseum/Contact
foundationdalim@gmail.comAbout Artists
Daeuk Kim
Daeuk Kim’s work evokes images of enormous flowers, yet as one approaches, one encounters a surface resembling human skin. Starting from the belief that everyone is a mutation, he has explored variations and abnormal phenomena occurring in nature through his series of transformed flowers. The anthropomorphized floral forms prompt reflection on the value judgments, hybridity, and diversity that humans have imposed through nature’s variations.
Wunggyu Park
Wunggyu Park creates images that evoke ambivalent emotions, drawing on the formal qualities found in classical Buddhist paintings of Korea and Japan. Referencing the painting techniques of Oriental art, he has experimented with its formal language, focusing on six approaches: mimicry, composition, form, texture, transformation, and adaptation. His method of combining insects like moths or centipedes, monstrous creatures, or the entrails of a cow reminiscent of the Ten Ox-Herding Pictures with Chinese characters explores an ambiguous sensation and emotion termed ‘negativity’.
Meekyoung Shin
Meekyoung Shin has persistently translated museum artifacts and cultural objects from East and West into the material of soap. Iconography from representative artifacts, such as classical Western sculptures or Eastern ceramics, repeatedly appears in her work. Exhibited across the globe, her soap sculptures have transformed in material state and appearance over time. Leaving room for interpretation that varies across cultural spheres, the work remains perpetually in a state of ‘becoming’.
Jaehong Ahn
Jaehong Ahn explores the material and environment surrounding the body’s senses through painting. His work oscillates between close and distant perspectives of daily life, organizing traces of the body, inner desires, and dream images into form. Beneath seemingly tranquil surfaces, subtle cracks and unease seep through, hinting at moments when seemingly solid worlds tremble. His paintings maintain equilibrium amid collision and isolation, revealing the inner tensions of humanity at the point where reality and illusion coexist.
Omyo Cho
Omyo Cho, inspired by natural forms and neural structures, has pursued sculpture and installation work based on the worldview of his own science fiction novels. His sculptures, primarily using glass, evoke neural networks, prompting imagination of future intelligences yet to arrive. His work, particularly centered on the transfer of memory, expands into reflections on contemporary society’s tendency to vicariously sense and edit others’ narratives.
Miryu Yoon
Miryu Yoon visualizes the materiality and narrative arising from the interaction between a figure and its surrounding environment through painting. While based on photographs taken by the artist, the work focuses less on realistic reproduction and more on recording the impression and texture of a fragmentary moment captured in a specific situation. Staged scenes are arranged across multiple panels; this approach evokes the emotions felt while experiencing the subject, stimulating a personal yet abstract sensation.
Yongbin Lee
Yongbin Lee creates unfamiliar forms reminiscent of living creatures using materials such as metal, leather, and latex. These images, reminiscent of digital games, science fiction, or fantasy, originate in the virtual and fictional yet undeniably stand on solid ground in the exhibition space. Skins of varying textures are draped over wireframe skeletons. Between the skeleton and the epidermis, the internal void. Works with flat skin emerge from the screen to begin life on this earth.
About AOD Museum
ART OF DALIM (AOD) is a non-profit museum guided by the slogan “Art for Life, Life for All.” Moving beyond the focus on specific artists or fame, AOD aspires to be an open stage where anyone can become a creator and everyone can be an audience. We believe that art is not a privilege to be monopolized by a few, but a vital life asset to be shared and experienced by all.
AOD was established through the patronage of Dalim Biotech, a company that has long championed the value that “human life is more precious than profit.” The corporate spirit of Dalim Biotech, which prioritizes life and public interest, extends into AOD’s mission of public service—ensuring that art remains a communal gift for everyone.
(Text and images courtesy of AOD Museum)
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Johyun Gallery Presents Contemplative Forms at Frieze LA 2026
Lee Kwang-Ho, Untitled 6804, 2025, Oil on canvas, 193.9 x 130.3 cm Johyun Gallery will participate in Frieze LA 2026, which opens with a VIP Preview on February 26, 2026, at Santa Monica Airport in Los Angeles, USA. This presentation proposes contemplation and meditation as shared aesthetic keywords across a broad spectrum of artistic practices—including sculpture, painting, installation, and art furniture—while offering another depth of contemporary art through Dansaekhwa and Mono-ha, performative painting, and material-based practices.
Kim Tschang-Yeul has explored the boundary between reality and illusion through the single motif of the “water drop” for more than fifty years. The water droplets resting on the canvas capture a suspended moment in time, creating pictorial spaces where tension and stillness coexist. At Frieze LA, his iconic work Water Drop (1974) will be presented, and what began from personal wounds shaped by his era expands into a universal sense of healing and purification.
Representing Korean Dansaekhwa, Park Seo-Bo has constructed an Eastern mode of contemplation in painting through repetitive actions and the accumulation of time. His Écriture series presents painting not as a result but as a trace of time, formed through the performative processes of drawing, covering, and erasing. The red Écriture No. 090615 (2009), combining the materiality of hanji with bodily gesture, exemplifies Park’s distinctive formal language. His work is also currently on view in the group exhibition Road Movie: Korean and Japanese Art after 1945 at the Yokohama Museum of Art.
Kishio Suga, Segregation of apex, 1995, Wood, water base paint, 40 x 40 x 23.5 cm Kim Chong Hak has long expressed the four seasons of Mt. Seorak and the vitality of nature through vivid colors and free figuration. Moving between abstraction and representation, his paintings densely embody sensory impressions and memories of nature. At Frieze LA, he will unveil his White Series, reminiscent of the snow-covered landscapes of Seorak. Kim Chong Hak is also scheduled to open a solo exhibition this September at the Phoenix Art Museum in Arizona.
As a leading figure of Mono-ha, Kishio Suga reveals the relationships between objects and space by arranging unprocessed materials. His practice focuses on fluid relationships and balance rather than fixed forms, presenting a sculptural experience akin to a landscape. Through Segregation of Apex (1995), installed at the right-angled boundary where two walls meet, Suga articulates the tension and equilibrium between object and space.
Choi Byung Hoon, Afterimage of beginning 021-574, 2021, Black urethane finish on ash, aluminum plate, natural stone, 161 × 130 × 38 cm In the field of art furniture, Choi Byung Hoon has established a singular position by transforming furniture from a functional object into a subject of contemplation. Preserving the vitality of natural materials, his works blur the boundary between use and appreciation, inviting viewers to engage in a meditative experience through body and space. Afterimage of Beginning 021-574, a sculptural object based on a storage structure, delicately reveals the tension and balance between object and sculpture. His art furniture will be presented this May at Johyun Gallery_Seoul.
For more than thirty years, Lee Bae has continued his contemplation on life and death, circulation, and nature through the material of charcoal. At Frieze LA, he will present Issu du Feu, in which cut pieces of charcoal are densely placed and joined on canvas before the surface is polished, alongside Brushstroke paintings that reveal the raw gestures of brushwork using ink mixed with charcoal powder, as well as bronze sculptures. He is scheduled to hold a solo exhibition this April at Museum SAN in Wonju, South Korea.
Lee Bae, Brushstroke S6, 2025, Bronze, 62 x 56 x 106 (H) cm Kim Taek Sang has long explored the diffusion and sedimentation of color through the medium of water. The performative process of repeatedly applying and drying minute amounts of pigment and water forms his distinctive painting practice known as “Dam-hwa” (淡畵). Key series will be introduced, including Breathing Light, grounded in the Korean aesthetics of humility and restraint, as well as the more dynamic Flows and Resonance.
Lee Kwang-Ho investigates layers of sensation and perception by combining painterly tradition with cinematic and photographic perspectives. Natural landscapes are not subjects of representation but are reconstructed as flows of memory and gaze, expanding tactile perception through segmented canvases. At Frieze LA, he will present Untitled 6804 (2025) from his Cactus Series.
Bosco Sodi, BS_P 41270, 2024, Mixed media on canvas, 26.5 x 17.5 cm Bosco Sodi has garnered international attention for his material paintings characterized by rough surfaces and intense colors. Building up thick layers of pigment and natural materials on canvas and leaving them to the passage of time, his works do not foreground gesture but instead record the traces of time as formed autonomously by matter itself. At Frieze LA, his representative relief paintings, marked by material fissures and the imprint of time, will be introduced.
Lee So Yeun constructs a painterly world in which intimacy and unfamiliarity coexist, grounded in autobiographical memory and everyday scenes. Purple Dress (2020) evokes emotions of repression, desire, and nostalgia, capturing the moment where interior and exterior intersect. Lee So-Yeon recently concluded a successful solo exhibition at Johyun Gallery_Seoul.
Kang Kang Hoon, Cotton, 2022, Oil on canvas, 200 x 200 cm Ahn Jisan visualizes the boundaries between life and death and existence through narrative collage and painterly staging. Moving between the perspectives of the subject and the witness, his works extend beyond a single scene to form a space for narrative contemplation, continuing this trajectory with his new work Memories of a Blue Bird (2026).
Kang Kang Hoon’s portraits transcend outward representation, guiding viewers toward self-reflection through the inner states and emotional lines of his subjects. His free brushwork and fluid colors evoke questions of universal identity beyond personal narratives, expanding this direction through the large-scale Cotton series.
Through this presentation, Johyun Gallery brings together different generations and media to present thebroad spectrum of contemporary art. Under the shared attitudes of “time,” “nature,” “practice,” and “contemplation,” each artist’s work unfolds in distinct ways, demonstrating the coexistence of diverse formal languages
Venue
Frieze LA 2026 _ Booth A10Artists
Kim Tschang-Yeul, Park Seo-Bo, Kim Chong Hak, Kishio Suga, Choi Byung Hoon, Lee Bae, Kim Taek Sang, Lee Kwang-Ho, Bosco Sodi, Ahn Jisan, Kang Kang HoonExhibition Dates
February 26 10:00 – 19:00 (VIP Preview)
February 27 11:00 – 19:00 (VIP Preview)
February 28 11:00 – 19:00 (Public Access)
March 1 11:00 – 18:00 (Public Access)Gallery Hours
Tuesday – Sunday | 10:30 AM – 6:30 PMWebsite
https://www.johyungallery.comInstagram
https://www.instagram.com/johyungallery/Contact
info@johyungallery.com(Text and images courtesy of Johyun Gallery)
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ARARIO GALLERY SHANGHAI Presents a Group Exhibition: After the Reaction
Poster credit: ARARIO GALLERY SHANGHAI ARARIO GALLERY SHANGHAI presents After the Reaction, a group exhibition by CHEN Xiaozhi (b. 1980), LU Chunsheng (b. 1968), SUN Yiwen (b. 1991), and YAN Heng (b. 1982), which employs “chemistry” as a central metaphor to explore the ongoing effects of technological innovation, social structures, and historical narratives in contemporary life. Here, “chemistry” is not limited to a laboratory discipline but is understood as a mechanism of modernity concerned with transformation, refinement, acceleration, and control: technologies evolve, forms change, yet humanity’s impulse to convert the world into power and resources persists. In this sense, “chemistry” serves as a lens for understanding the structural contradictions of the contemporary world.
CHEN Xiaozhi, 25ml of Energy A, 2024, 24k Gold leaf, glass solvent, old wooden base, antique wood carving leaf holder, 9 x 26.5 x 1 cm CHEN Xiaozhi constructs a contemporary “cabinet of curiosities” through foil, glass, and ancient craftsmanship. Her work does not aim to reproduce history; rather, it activates time in the act of viewing through light, reflection, and accumulation. In CHEN’s practice, what remains invariant is not the historical forms or material traditions themselves, but the very modes through which time is perceived, observed, and refracted—a perceptual structure that continuously operates through light, reflection, and sedimentation.
LU Chunsheng, I want to be a Gentleman (1), 2000, B&W chromogenic print, 77.5 x 64 cm, Edition of 8 (#6/8) LU Chunsheng’s History of Chemistry originates from a photograph of an offshore drilling platform: a massive structure almost entirely exposed above the water, emerging like a foreign object from the sea. In his perspective, the Asia-Pacific region resembles a continuously operating alchemical workshop. Through photography, LU interprets modernization as an ongoing process of alchemy: technologies are constantly updated, narratives are constantly reshaped, yet the desire to convert the world into resources and objects of control remains unaltered. In works such as Hey! Lana and I Want to Be a Gentleman, this logic is translated into arrangements of bodies, spaces, and power: identities are updated, narratives rewritten, yet the ways in which power organizes the body persist.
YAN Heng, Poem Porn – NO.7, 2022-2024, Mixed media, 125 x 125 cm YAN Heng’s painting focuses on structural residues that continue to operate after moments of change have ostensibly concluded. Renewed Continuum draws on the image of the Arhat Rāhula from Manpuku-ji Temple in Kyoto: the chest is opened to reveal a Buddha head within, and the body no longer functions as a complete individual but as a vessel through which meaning is stored, transmitted, and renewed. Grounded in the logic of inheritance, this figure is placed within a system composed of measuring instruments, circuitry, and utilitarian objects. Here, renewal no longer signifies rupture or rebirth, but a managed and maintained process—meanings may be replaced, while the structure itself continues to operate.
Under this premise, YAN’s Poem Porn series, can be understood as the material articulation of the same logic. Oysters belong simultaneously to marine ecology and to global systems of extraction, transportation, and consumption; their natural qualities and industrial logics converge on the surface, forming a material state that is repeatedly processed yet never fully resolved. No longer merely objects of observation, they become nodes within contemporary systems of cleaning, processing, and interpretation.
SUN Yiwen, Out of Control, 2024, Oil on canvas, 150 x 121 cm SUN Yiwen’s paintings position the body in states of imbalance, fall, and torsion, creating a distant resonance with classical depictions of “the fall” in art history. Unlike religious or fate-driven narratives, the bodies in his works are not struck down by divine will but are shaped by institutions, capital, and social structures. While the meaning of the body constantly shifts, the structures that govern it remain unyielding, becoming one of the most direct yet imperceptible manifestations of contemporary social conditions.
This exhibition does not aim to reconstruct history. Rather, by juxtaposing practices across media and generations, it examines structural residues that continue to operate even after profound social, technological, and material transformations. These residues are not historical relics; they are embedded in the present through material forms, bodily orders, and spatial logic, continuously shaping the mechanisms by which reality functions. The exhibition foregrounds the disjunction between surface-level change and deep structural continuity in contemporary life, revealing how such disjunctions are perceived, maintained, and reproduced within everyday experience.
Venue
ARARIO GALLERY SHANGHAI (2F-205, 30 Wen’an Road, Jing’an District)Artists
CHEN Xiaozhi, LU Chunsheng, SUN Yiwen, YAN HengExhibition Dates
16 January – 7 March, 2026Gallery Hours
Tuesday – Saturday | 11 AM – 6 PMWebsite
https://www.arariogallery.comInstagram
https://www.instagram.com/arariogallery_official/Contact
info@arariogallery.com(Text and images courtesy of ARARIO GALLERY SHANGHAI)
