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PKM Gallery Presents From Hands: A Group Exhibition Focusing on the Intersection of Fine Art and Craft as its First Exhibition of 2026
PKM Gallery will open the year with From Hands, a group exhibition on view from February 4 to March 21 at the main building. This exhibition highlights the ‘handcrafted’ works of six artists— Inchin Lee (b. 1957), Kim Syyoung (b. 1957), Myungjin Lee (b. 1995), Koo Hyunmo (b. 1974), Young In Hong (b. 1972) and Chung Chang-Sup (1927–2011)—who focus on the tactile sensibility of the hand at the intersection of fine art and craft.
Installation view of From Hands at PKM, Courtesy of PKM Gallery In an era where machines and digital technologies dominate human intelligence, tactile and bodily experiences have become increasingly precious. The trembling and sensations at the fingertips, which algorithms can’t easily predict, paradoxically seem to affirm what makes us human in the age of artificial intelligence. From Hands illuminates a boundary-free world where fine art and craft converge, leaving behind the intangible virtual realm beyond glossy screens to focus on work created through direct physical engagement with materials. Relying on the primitive yet honest tool of the hand, the exhibition invites viewers to closely observe the ‘actual’ moment where the artist meets the material.
Installation view of From Hands at PKM, Courtesy of PKM Gallery Ceramic master Inchin Lee, who prioritizes the value of labor, has spent the last 50 years crafting modest earthenware pieces using clay, fire, and wood ash. His practice involves wheel-thrown vessels fired in a wood kiln for five to six days without glaze—a technique that honors traditional craftsmanship while extending it into a contemporary vernacular. The natural patterns and hues on the ceramic surfaces result from not only the artist’s touch but also various organic factors including the properties of the clay and wood, the winds generated by flames within the kiln, and the dispersal of wood ash. This exhibition presents his major works from the 1990s onward, including generously proportioned jars, tea bowls, and vases. Lee honed his practice in the United States, Korea, and Bizen, Japan, and served as a professor in the Department of Ceramics and Glass at Hongik University for 31 years beginning in 1991, during which time he nurtured the next generation of artists. In 2023, he garnered international acclaim as a finalist for the LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft Prize.
*In cooperation with Arumjigi Foundation
Inchin Lee, Untitled, 2018, Wood-fired stoneware, 50 x 46 x 46 cm, Courtesy of the artist and PKM Gallery Master of black-glazed ceramics Kim Syyoung began his journey into black-glazed ceramics after discovering black-glazed shards while hiking the Baekdudaegan mountain range as a member of the university mountaineering club during his studies in materials engineering. For forty years, he created a unique artistic universe by reinterpreting and varying Goryeo black ceramics. The black in Kim’s ceramics is not a mere color but a luminous spectrum evocative of iridescent insect wings, peacock feathers, and seashells. This visual complexity is the result of ‘necessity’—derived from the artist’s scientific inquiry—meeting the ‘serendipity’ of physical reactions at temperatures exceeding 1,300°C. The exhibition features his Planet series, where moon jars and vessels exhibit striking structural coloration and yobyeon. Kim received the Hwagwan Order of Cultural Merit of the Republic of Korea in 2019, and his large moon jars are held in the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Guimet Museum in Paris.
Kim Syyoung, Planet TB_60, 2005, 1350˚C reduction firing, 6.5 x 12.3 x 12.3 cm, Courtesy of the artist and PKM Gallery Young ceramic artist Myungjin Lee creates clay objects inspired by architectural elements. Beyond the volume and silhouette of buildings, he incorporates the intricate lines, markings, and proportions of blueprints into his work. Lee identifies parallels between the vertical construction of architecture and the ceramic coiling technique, where long rope-like clay is layered. By focusing on the physical properties of clay and the manual process of building, he achieves a balance between architectural geometry and fluid form, realizing a harmony between aesthetics and functionality. In this exhibition, he presents a modular block shelve series and stools.
Myungjin Lee, block shelve 09, 2026, Coiling, mixed clay, glazed, 12 x 37 x 10 cm, Courtesy of the artist and PKM Gallery Koo Hyunmo, majored in both ceramics and sculpture, flexibly integrates natural materials such as clay and wood with artificial materials like metal and acrylic through the tactility of the hand. Since last year, he has focused on ceramic work, immersing himself in experiments with the free forms of clay and the colors and textures of glazes. His latest works, including tree on the rock on the wall—where nature is translated into ceramics—and the standing sculpture forest island—where the wood grain vibrates like a forest swaying in the wind—utilize the gallery’s walls and floors to create a three-dimensional installation.
Koo Hyunmo, 모과나무, 2026, Quince tree, 38 x 34 x 46 cm, Courtesy of the artist and PKM Gallery Young In Hong employs textile, sculpture, and performance to excavate individual narratives of animals and humans. Her Signalling series translates the sound waves of elephants in distress into abstract weavings. A Colourful Waterfall and the Stars is a large-scale installation that dismantles and rewrites the testimonies of female textile factory workers in Korea from the 1970s and 1980s through thread and fabric. The Easton, Bristol series brings urban graffiti from the streets of Bristol, where the artist currently resides, into the realm of embroidery. Much like the logic of weaving, Hong constructs symbolic systems by unravelling and reweaving marginalized voices and fragmented images through the labor of the hand.
Young In Hong, A Colourful Waterfall and the Stars, 2021, Copper Pipe, 3 glass balls, various fabrics, rubber, wood, electric cable, and 3 LED lamps, 220 x 215 x 40 cm, Courtesy of the artist and PKM Gallery Lastly, the exhibition presents Chung Chang-Sup’s Tak (mulberry bark fiber) paintings from the late 1990s to the early 2000s. From the early 1980s onward, for thirty years, Chung engaged in a unique process of kneading soaked mulberry pulp directly onto the canvas with his hands, allowing it to slowly solidify. His work epitomizes the state where the artist’s gestures become indistinguishable from the vitality of the material. In particular, the Meditation series, a lifelong pursuit, exists as tactile objects that transcend the flatness of the painted plane, quietly revealing his profound aesthetic achievements within a restrained screen.
Chung Chang-Sup, Meditation 23707, 2003, Tak fiber on cotton, 91 x 116.7 cm. © The Estate of Chung Chang-Sup, Courtesy of PKM Gallery From Hands broadly encompasses everything from the tradition-bridging ceramics of Inchin Lee and Kim Syyoung to Myungjin Lee’s architectural investigations in clay, Koo Hyunmo’s movement between ceramics and sculpture, Young In Hong’s textiles, and Chung Chang-Sup’s paintings that reached a state of spiritual unity. By examining the works of fine art and craft—which are different yet similar—without distinction, the exhibition invites the audience into a warm dialogue carried by the diverse movements of the hand.
Venue
40, Samcheong-ro 7-gil, Jongno-gu, SeoulArtists
Inchin Lee, Kim Syyoung, Myungjin Lee, Koo Hyunmo, Young In Hong, Chung Chang-SupExhibition Dates
4 February – 21 March, 2026Gallery Hours
Tuesday – Sunday | 10 AM – 6 PMWebsite
https://www.pkmgallery.com/Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/p21.kr/Contact
info@pkmgallery.com(Text and images courtesy of PKM Gallery)
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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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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)
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ShanghART Singapore Annexe Presents Immortal Words :: 字基, a Solo Exhibition by Boedi Widjaja
Poster credit: ShanghART Singapore Annexe Boedi Widjaja’s solo exhibition “Immortal Words :: 字基” is now on view at ShanghART Singapore Annexe, running through 1 March. The project splices poetry with genetic code, meditating on the diasporic condition.The artist asks: if history is displaced, how might it take up new space through the body? His four-line toponymic poem spatialises as DNA nano-sculptures—line, circle, cube—released through a gachapon machine, with a microfluidic molecular writing process unspooled on video. A living participatory work realized with geneticist Eric Yap, and with the support of NAC Creation Grant, Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine and Institute of Digital Molecular Analytics and Science, NTU Singapore.
Boedi Widjaja (b. 1975, Indonesia; based in Singapore) explores migration through the conceptual frames of house, home and homeland, engaging with space and semiotics. Trained in architecture and design, Boedi works across media—from bio art and performance to experimental photography and architectural installations—often combining scientific phenomena with poetic gesture.
Widjaja received the inaugural QAGOMA and Singapore Art Museum co-commission for his Black–Hut series, presented at the 9th Asia Pacific Triennial (2018-19) and the 6th Singapore Biennale (2019-20). His works have been included in international group shows such as Thailand Biennale: The Open World, Chiang Rai, Thailand (2023); Cladogram: KMA’s 2nd International Juried Biennial, Katonah Museum of Art, New York (2021), in which he was awarded First Prize; MAP1: Waterways, Diaspora Pavilion, 57th Venice Biennale (2017); Jerusalem Biennale (2017); Yinchuan Biennale (2016); From east to the Barbican, Barbican, London (2015); Infinity in flux, ArtJog, Indonesia (2015); and Bains Numériques #7, Enghien-les-Bains, France (2012) amongst others. Recent solo exhibitions include Kang Ouw《侠客行》(2022), Esplanade Tunnel, Singapore; Declaration of (2019), Helwaser Gallery, New York; Rivers and lakes Tanah dan air (2018), ShanghART Singapore; and Black—Hut (2016), Singapore Biennale Affiliate Project, ICA Singapore. He was an Artist-in-Residence at the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, Temenggong Singapore and DRAWinternational France.
Installation view of Immortal Words :: 字基, Courtesy of ShanghART Singapore Annexe Venue
ShanghART Singapore Annexe, 9 Lock Road, #02-22, Gillman Barracks, Singapore 108937Artists
Boedi WidjajaExhibition Dates
17 January – 1 March, 2026Gallery Hours
Wednesday – Sunday | 12PM – 6 PMWebsite
https://www.shanghartgallery.com/Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/shanghartgallery/Contact
infosg@shanghartgallery.com(Text and images courtesy of ShanghART Singapore Annexe)
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A Lighthouse called Kanata Presents All is Fulfilled, a Solo Exhibition by Keisuke Matsuda
Poster credit: A Lighthouse called Kanata A Lighthouse called Kanata proudly presents All is Fulfilled , a solo exhibition by Kyoto based painter Keisuke Matsuda, featuring fourteen new works created specifically for this presentation at our new gallery in Omotesando, Tokyo, Japan.
As art critic Minoru Shimizu says of the artist, his works are not abstract, for he paints with clear intent; and yet they are not representational, for what appears on the surface cannot be named as any familiar figuration. Instead, singular and difficult-to-describe forms are flung across the plane—or into space itself. One may need a moment to acclimate before recognizing the charm: the freedom and fluidity that accompany what at first glance appears rough, the buoyant strangeness and humor of his forms, the exquisitely chosen colors.
untitled (spiraea thunbergii), 2025, Oil on canvas, 116.7 x 91 cm Duchamp left behind an epitaph: “It is always the others who die.” Indeed, no matter how much something is explained in words, life is full of experiences that one must encounter oneself. From “birth” to “death,” everything happens for the first time—even to the most ordinary child. Faced with painting’s impasse—where no matter what one paints or how, the sense of déjà vu (that polished, cynical feeling) cannot be wiped away—artists thought the following: Painting must be understood as a proper noun. No matter how banal or kitsch its appearance, I experience it for the first time. Painting is what I, this singular self, paint—and what paints me in return. In the 2000s, many artists emerged who compensated for this tautology with ever more crafted, artisanal techniques. Today the market is awash in paintings overflowing with narrative and explanation—pseudo-confessional works that proclaim their meanings and leave nothing unsaid. Standing apart from the cynical painters and the “this-self ” painters, Keisuke Matsuda possessed genuine “things to paint.” These “things to paint” arise beyond the point where one has discarded the self, the motif, and even the manner of depiction.
The artist describes his own process: “When I am completely focused in the studio, the world and myself begin to compress. Then, at a certain instant, they fold together, and my-self become the world. In the next moment, the world peels away again, leaving an imprint adhered inside me. That trace is volatile—it fades quickly—so before it disappears, I hurry to retrace it. That becomes the work. The experience of ‘self = world,’ prior to the division of subject and object, is the reason I continue to paint.”
untitled (pounce), 2025, Oil on canvas, 91 x 65.4 cm Indeed, the characteristics of his work follow directly from this principle: his disinterest in painterly effect; the rough, rapid strokes and lines that pursue evaporating forms; the absence of composition premised on a frame. Matsuda’s paintings are the traces of a moment in which subject and world are newly separated and newly generated—each and every time. One may feel intimidated by the talk of phenomenological reduction or Zen enlightenment, but expressed differently it is a familiar phrase in dance, music, and sport: the best performance—movement, playing, competition—happens when one becomes “empty,” when the self is momentarily gone. Needless to say, no one can become empty by willing it (“I have become empty” is itself a form of consciousness). One only realizes, after an exceptional performance, that one was empty.
That Matsuda’s painting is a kind of visualize d performance (dance, gesture) is evident in the fact that most of his works have no fixed orientation, and in the near-equivalence of his painting and his ceramics. What he presents is a replay—a regeneration—of the world before the separation of self and object, unconcerned with the medium of expression. A work devoted solely to manifesting “what must be painted” is forthright and pure. And the place prior to subject is an airy world that brims with light.
Minoru Shimizu, Art Critic
untitled (small garden), 2025, Oil on canvas, 38 x 45.6 cm Venue
3-5-7 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, Japan 150-0001Artists
Keisuke MatsudaExhibition Dates
13 February, 2025 – 28 February, 2026Gallery Hours
Tuesday – Saturday | 11 AM – 6 PMWebsite
https://lighthouse-kanata.com/en/Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/lighthouse_kanata/Contact
info@lighthouse-kanata.comAbout the Artist and Work
KEISUKE MATSUDA
“I try to paint a world that transcends the objective and the subjective. This world consciously changes, and by moving the body and the image in my mind’s eye, the world begins to express the real world itself.”
One of Kanata’s newest young artists in painting, Keisuke Matsuda (1984– ) of Kyoto channels energies that abound in mysticism and spirituality to create seemingly minimal abstractions that brim with a self-assured confidence that is beyond his years. Having received his MFA at the Kyoto City University of Arts, the artist has lived a relatively quiet, almost hermit-like existence in the south of Kyoto where his studio is located. Yet in recent years this up-and-coming painter has garnered a core following from collectors attracted to the sort of primitive, almost primordial paintings that are borne from the artist’s deep conversations with his materials and with his constant conversations with the world before him.
The artist, in fact, claims that his works are figurative, and are attempts to grasp the tangible world around him by capturing and painting the world of “things” through imagery that are essentially “intangible”. After long and tumultuous conversations within himself, the artist would viscerally paint the world of the tangible in minimal, simplistic brushstrokes that capture a mood, a time, a place in the mind of the artist.
In the words of the artist, “When I am completely focused in the studio, the world and myself begin to compress. Then, at a certain instant, they fold together and myself becomes the world. In the next moment, the world peels away again, leaving an imprint adhered inside me. That trace is volatile—it fades quickly—so before it disappears, I hurry to retrace it. That becomes the work. The experience of ‘self = world,’ prior to the division of subject and object, is the reason I continue to paint.”
(Text and images courtesy of A Lighthouse called Kanata and Keisuke Matsuda)
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Whitestone Gallery Presents a Group Exhibition: Almost Spring
Poster credit: Whitestone Gallery Whitestone Gallery is pleased to present Almost Spring, a curated selection from the gallery’s collection, unfolding across multiple floors as a gradual shift in mood, material, and color. Like the season it alludes to, the exhibition inhabits a moment of transition—where stillness begins to loosen and subtle vitality surfaces.
Jiang Miao, Mindfulness, 2023, Acrylic on aluminium panel, carving, 90.0 x 90.0 cm The B1 space is dedicated to abstract works that emphasize texture and materiality. Featuring works by Yayoi Kusama, Jiang Miao, Soonik Kwon, Tsuyoshi Maekawa and Katsuyoshi Inokuma, this floor invites viewers into a tactile landscape shaped by repetition, gesture, and surface. Here, matter feels dense and contemplative, echoing the quiet persistence beneath winter’s pause.
Karen Shiozawa, Dune, 2024, Alkyd resin, acrylic, oil on wooden panel, 116.7 x 91 cm Moving upward, the 2nd floor opens into a more dynamic visual rhythm. Works by Aruta Soup, Karen Shiozawa, and Jaehyun Lee explore pop-inflected color, movement, and layered textures in distinct stylistic languages. The atmosphere becomes lighter and more animated, suggesting energy beginning to circulate—forms stretch, colors vibrate, and compositions breathe more freely.
The exhibition culminates on the 4th floor, which focuses on print works by internationally recognized artists including Damien Hirst, KAWS, and Yayoi Kusama, among others. Bright, graphic, and playful, these works foreground pop sensibility and reproducibility, offering a sense of openness and immediacy that completes the exhibition’s gradual ascent toward color and clarity.
We hope visitors enjoy this exhibition as a moment just before spring fully arrives.
Venue
Whitestone Gallery Seoul, 70 Sowol-ro, Yongsan-ku, Seoul, KoreaArtists
Yayoi Kusama, Damien Hirst, Lee Ufan, Julian Opie, KAWS, Florentijn Hofman, Tsuyoshi Maekawa, Katsuyoshi Inokuma, Kwon Soonik, Lee Jaehyun, Jiang Miao, Aruta Soup, Ahhi Choi, Karen ShiozawaExhibtion Dates
24 January – 28 February, 2026Gallery Hours
Tuesday – Sunday | 11 AM – 7 PMWebsite
https://www.whitestone-gallery.comInstagram
https://www.instagram.com/whitestonegallery.officialContact
https://www.whitestone-gallery.com/pages/contact(Text and images courtesy of Whitestone Gallery Seoul)
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Tang Contemporary Art Presents Group Exhibition: Tracing Places, Weaving Times
Poster credit: Tang Contemporary Art Tang Contemporary Art presents Tracing Places, Weaving Times, curated by Cynthia Liu and Terry Chong, on exhibit from 17 January 2026 – 1 March 2026, in Bangkok. This group exhibition brings together three Thai artists—Sornchai Pongsa, Butsapasila Wanjing, and Amalapon Robinson—whose practices explore how identity is formed at the intersection of place, culture, and memory.
Whether bridging rural borderlands and urban density or myth and lived reality, the exhibition offers a multilayered portrait of Thailand as experienced through the next generation of artists born between the 1990s and 2000s. Moving between the past and the present, between the personal and the collective, the exhibition invites viewers to consider how Thailand’s many stories are carried, reshaped, and reimagined across generations.
Across Thailand’s diverse regions, cultural identities emerge not only from formal histories but from the intimate details of daily life—traditions passed on quietly, stories shared casually, materials handled out of habit and necessity. These nuances, often invisible from the outside, form the true texture of the Thai identity. Grounded in this idea, the featured artists draw from the spaces they grew up in—mountainous borders, northern villages, Bangkok’s layered urban sprawl—yet render their memories through contemporary visual languages. Each distinct, yet interconnected, their practices echo, diverge, and intersect, forming an open-ended narrative about belonging, change, and continuity. Together, they present Thailand not as a single story but as a complex and evolving constellation of histories, ethnicities, and lived realities.
Sornchai Pongsa, Ritual Laborers, 2026, Stainless steel sheet, transparent nylon line, stainless steel objects, 120 x 120 cm Sornchai Pongsa: Diaspora, Displacement, Becoming
Hailing from a Mon community along Thailand’s Western border, Sornchai Pongsa’s work emerges from a lived experience shaped by cultural inheritance, displacement, and adaptation. His conceptual practice draws on the intertwined history of his family and people—stories marked by movement, negotiation, and survival. Drawing from familial stories, local histories, and the complexities of modern existence, Sornchai’s pieces evoke a sense of loss and adaptation, yet also resilience and redefinition. Through powerful visual forms and mixed media artworks, he captures the simultaneous ache for what is left behind and the urgency to forge new identities and preservation of traditions in unfamiliar landscapes. His pieces become vessels for memory—at once fragile and forceful—inviting viewers to witness the multi-layered experience of diaspora within the Thai context.
Building on his earlier work Mon Spirits Totem (2016), Pongsa presents a technologically infused meditation on “statelessness,” conceptualizing the body and territory as absent hardware and the spirit as enduring software. Through ethereal installations of suspended structures and volumes of light, he visualizes the migration of identity from the physical to the metaphysical, raising profound questions about the persistence of ritual and belief in a digitized era. His work emphasizes both loss and adaptation, showing how cultural memory endures even when physical borders are absent.
Butsapasila Wanjing, Welcome Drink, 2026, Oil on canvas, 40 x 60 cm Butsapasila Wanjing: Memory, Myth, and the Remaking of History
Butsapasila Wanjing approaches memory as something formed not only through official histories but through the informal stories embedded in everyday life. His practice draws from Lanna culture, folkloric and mystical beliefs, childhood memories of Chiang Mai, and raw materials collected from the northern landscapes he grew up in. His works—textured, layered, and enigmatic—entice viewers to look closer, searching for traces of narratives that have been transformed, suppressed, or forgotten.
A central focus of his recent work is the rewriting of historical memory spaces. Butsapasila’s exploration extends beyond Thailand’s borders. His exploration of overland trade routes examines the longstanding cultural and economic relationships between Thailand and mainland China. From ancient exchanges of goods and knowledge along the Tea Horse Road—glazed ceramics, tea-making traditions, the role of horses—to their later integration into the vast Silk Road network, he traces how these routes shaped communal life in the borderlands.
In the present, he observes how the Belt and Road Initiative has reshaped these ancient corridors into pathways of capital, cross-border investment, and sometimes illicit or informal economies. What were once routes of cultural circulation have become sites where geopolitical power is contested and negotiated. Through paintings and mixed-media presentations, Butsapasila renders these overlapping histories visible—revealing the delicate interplay between memory, state power, regional identity, and the shifting forces that continue to shape northern Thailand.
Amalapon Robinson, Chinatown, 2026, Oil on canvas, 100 x 100 cm Amalapon Robinson: Urban Light, Inner Loneliness
In contrast to the northern landscapes and border narratives of Sornchai and Butsapasila, Amalapon Robinson turns her gaze toward the dense urban rhythms of Bangkok—a city of constant illumination. Growing up between two cultures, Amalapon investigates identity and belonging within a metropolis defined by artificial light. Her hauntingly beautiful oil paintings capture intimate domestic scenes and everyday urban moments, using the interplay of radiance and shadow to reflect the emotional undercurrents of city life.
In her work, light becomes both a physical necessity and a metaphor for searching—searching for connection, clarity, or simply a sense of place amid the city’s overwhelming glare. While there is always light in darkness, Amalapon reveals how urban brightness can coexist with profound loneliness. Her paintings resonate with quiet intensity, suggesting that in a world saturated with illumination, the most meaningful forms of luminosity may be internal.
Together, these three artists illustrate the many ways Thai identity is shaped—by geography, by memory, by generations of cultural inheritance, and by the changing landscapes of modern life. Their works bridge past and present, local and national, rural and urban, inviting viewers to consider how individual stories intersect to form a broader cultural tapestry.
Tracing Places, Weaving Times does not offer a singular definition of Thai identity. Instead, it opens a space for reflection—on where we come from, what we carry, and how our surroundings continually shape who we are becoming. Through the perspectives of the next generation of Thai artists, the exhibition presents the Thai experience as a place of layered histories, evolving cultures, and rich, interconnected experiences.
Venue
Tang Contemporary Art BangkokArtists
Sornchai Phongsa, Butsapasila Wanjing, Amalapon RobinsonExhibtion Dates
17 January – 1 March, 2026Gallery Hours
Tuesday – Sunday | 11 AM – 7 PMWebsite
https://www.tangcontemporary.comInstagram
https://www.instagram.com/tangcontemporaryart/Contact
bkk@tangcontemporary.comAbout the Artists
SORNCHAI PHONGSA
b. 1991, Thailand
Sornchai Phongsa was born and raised within the Mon ethnic community in Thailand, an upbringing that shaped his engagement with migration, displacement, and hybrid identities in Southeast Asia. Drawing on his heritage and academic training and having graduated from Silpakorn University with a BFA in 2015 and an MFA in 2017, Phongsa develops a visual language that interweaves personal memory, collective history, and socio-political narratives.
Working across installation and mixed-media, he employs vernacular materials and performative spatial strategies to recontextualize spiritual traditions and interrogate the politics of belonging and territory. Key projects include Mon’s Spirits Totem (Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, 2017), Montopia (Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, 2018), Le Flash (École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 2018), and Alien Capital for the Bangkok Art Biennale (2018).
Phongsa has participated in residencies at Tokyo Arts and Space and Cité Internationale des Arts, with works presented in exhibitions including Dogma Yard (Gallery Seescape, Chiang Mai) and MythMakers—Spectrosynthesis III 神話製造者——光.合作用 III (Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong, 2023).
In 2025, he presented his solo exhibition Diaspora at River City Bangkok, investigating displacement and hybrid identities among marginalized communities. He continues to develop research-driven projects exploring memory, migration, and the shifting cartographies of place and identity, extending his critical engagement with contemporary social and cultural transformations.
BUTSAPASILA WANJING
b. 2000, Chiang Mai, Thailand
Butsapasila Wanjing graduated from Silpakorn University in 2022 with a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts. His work delves into the historical and cultural landscapes of Thailand, addressing political, social, and environmental themes.
Butsapasila is interested in the processes through which collective memory of the past transforms over time, leaving traces and effects that persist into the present. His practice draws on diverse sources, including historical narratives shaped by conspiracy theories found in blogs and online media, supernatural beliefs transmitted through oral traditions, and local myths and fragmented histories that cannot be fully integrated into dominant, centralized historical narratives.
By also examining personal memory, he seeks to connect individual experience with broader social and cultural dynamics, reflecting on how the past is continually reinterpreted from multiple perspectives in the present and how these shifting understandings shape contemporary perceptions of history and identity.
AMALAPON ROBINSON
b. 1995, USA
Born 1995, Thai-American artist, Amalapon Robinson graduated from Silpakorn University in 2019. She has exhibited in group exhibitions in Thailand, at VS Gallery, Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, and Silapakorn University. Working primarily in oil painting, her practice explores quiet emotional landscapes within urban night scenes, with a focus on artificial light from windows, street lamps, and interior spaces.
Raised in an apartment in Bangkok, Amalapon draws from long-term observation of dense urban environments. Her paintings often emerge from moments of looking at the city from a distance, through windows or during night-time travel where artificial light becomes a symbol of living and working, carrying traces of life, hope, and dreams within the city. Through muted palettes and softened contrasts, her work captures a sense of calm and stillness embedded in ordinary, often overlooked urban spaces.
Amalapon explores the interactions between light and darkness – investigating how we use and engage with artificial lights in our everyday lives, and how urban society is dependent on this use of light. Though there is light in darkness physically, living in a city can result in a feeling of loneliness and isolation. This juxtaposition between the physical use of light and its metaphorical meaning is represented in her works, as she seeks more luminosity within the city.
About Tang Contemporary Art
Since its founding in Bangkok in 1997, Tang Contemporary Art has opened 8 spaces in Beijing, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Seoul and Singapore to promote the development of experimental art in different regions. In the past 28 years, Tang Contemporary Art has organized groundbreaking exhibitions in its gallery spaces, and also cooperated with important art institutions in China and abroad to accomplish outstanding art projects. The gallery strives to initiate dialogue between artists, curators, collectors and institutions working both locally and internationally. A roster of groundbreaking exhibitions has earned Tang Contemporary Art internationally renowned recognition, establishing its status as a pioneer of the contemporary art scene in Asia.
As one of China’s most influential contemporary art platforms, Tang Contemporary Art maintains a high standard of exhibition programming. Tang Contemporary Art represents or collaborates with leading figures in international contemporary art, including Ai Weiwei, Huang Yongping, Shen Yuan, Zhu Jinshi, Chen Danqing, Liu Qinghe, Liu Xiaodong, Chen Shaoxiong, Wang Yuping, Shen Ling, Shen Liang, Wu Yi, Xia Xiaowan, He Duoling, Mao Xuhui, Wang Huangsheng, Yang Jiechang, Tan Ping, Wang Du，Yan Lei, Yue Minjun, Wang Jianwei, Yangjiang Group, Zheng Guogu, Lin Yilin, Sun Yuan&Peng Yu, Qin Ga, Wang Qingsong, Yin Zhaoyang, Feng Yan, Guo Wei, Chen Wenbo, Ling Jian, Qin Qi, Yang Yong, Peng Wei, He An, Zhao Zhao, Xu Qu, Chen Yujun, Chen Yufan, Xue Feng, Cai Lei, Li Qing, Wang Sishun, Xu Xiaoguo, Lí Wei, Liu Yujia, Wu Wei, Yang Bodu, You Yong, Li Erpeng, Jade Ching-yuk Ng, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Adel Abdessemed, Niki de Saint Phalle, AES+F , Michael Zelehosk, Jonas Burgert, Christian Lemmerz, Michael Kvium, Sakarin Krue-On, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Natee Utarit, Kitti Narod, Gongkan, Entang Wiharso, Heri Dono, Nam June Paik, Park Seungmo, Jae Yong Kim, Diren Lee, Dinh Q. Lê, Rodel Tapaya, Jigger Cruz, Ayka Go, Raffy Napay, H.H.Lim, Etsu Egami, etc.
(Text and images courtesy of Tang Contemporary Art)
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Artemin Gallery Presents An Unarrived Hello, a Solo Exhibition by monouno
Poster Credit: Artemin Gallery Artemin Gallery is delighted to announce an upcoming exhibition, An Unarrived Hello, featuring a Taiwanese sculptural duo, monouno, Jui-Chien Hsu and Chiao-Chin Chiang.
Founded in 2021 by the two sculptural artists, monouno focuses on blurring the boundary between artworks and everyday furniture. The collective integrates the sculptor’s concerns with form, space, and the body directly into functional objects. Their works intentionally question conventional ideas of utility and aesthetics.
The duo shifted how people perceive furniture. Their works evoke the feeling of an unreachable phone number that no one answers, recasting familiar objects with new purposes and new personas. The longing to connect with something belated, or perhaps no longer present, runs throughout the entire exhibition.
Installation view of An Unarrived Hello When I dial a number and no one answers, that disconnected tone feels like a signal that hasn’t yet been received. Maybe the other person’s phone is o, or maybe the number doesn’t even exist. Yet in that long “beep—” sound, I still hold the posture of speaking, as if talking to someone who hasn’t appeared yet.
An unreachable number isn’t truly empty; it holds all the interrupted connections, the unfinished words, and our attempts to reach out that somehow drifted away. In that state, we try to speak to the void, letting objects act as extensions of our bodies—still functioning, even when no connection is made.
Installation view of An Unarrived Hello In reality, furniture has fixed purposes: a sofa is for resting, a dining table for eating. But here, they’re rearranged and renamed, becoming new existences. They’re moved, turned, as if responding to that disconnected tone—seeking another kind of connection within an unreachable frequency.
Perhaps the world of that empty number is simply the side that hasn’t yet been picked up. And the “hello” we say is a gentle greeting to the unknown, a soft call toward a presence that has not yet arrived.
mirror 25-01, 2025, Stainless steel, stone, mirror, leather, 63.5 x 26.5 cm Venue
111 Taipei City, Shilin District, Lane 251, Jihhe Road, No. 32, 1st FloorArtist
monouno, Jui-Chien Hsu and Chiao-Chin ChiangExhibition Dates
November 29, 2025 – December 20, 2025Gallery Hours
Tuesday – Saturday | 11:00 – 18:00Website
https://www.artemingallery.com/Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/artemin.gallery/Contact
info@artemingallery.com(Text and images courtesy of Artemin Gallery)
