Kumho Museum

2024 KUMHO YOUNG ARTIST 2

2024. 5. 10 - 6. 16

3F  IM Sungoo  'A castle built of dust' 

2F  WANG Seonjeong​   ' I learned how to fly'​

B1  KANG Leekyung   'Altered Existences in Ouroboros'​

Since its first open call in 2004, Kumho Museum of Art has selected 95 artists through its young artist support program, “Kumho Young Artist,” and hosted solo exhibitions for the artists. The exhibit 2024 KUMHO YOUNG ARTIST presents new works of 6 artists selected from the 21st open call at their respective solo exhibits. The first part (3.22~4.28) introduces Sumin Song, Jeisung Oh, and Eunbin Choi, and the second part (5.10~6.16) introduces Leekyung Kang, Seonjeong Wang, and Sungoo Im.

Leekyung Kang explores undiscovered structures in contemporary urban spaces, as well as the world hidden beneath the surface, and experiments with them using multiple visual languages. Through paintings, prints, and installation works, she reinterprets her interests in invisible realms within reality, including abandoned areas in GPS navigation programs or the dark matter of the underworld. In this exhibition, Kang suggests her own spatial thinking and concept of circulation while presenting objets, architectural structures, and unfamiliar images extracted from data collected during collaboration across physics, astronomy, and geography. Moreover, she induces expanded visual experiences through work that transcends the boundaries between the visible and invisible.​

Seonjeong Wang reconstructs aspects of life, events, and emotions that she has experienced and perceived into dramatic scenes on canvas. Portraying human anxieties, fears, and vulnerabilities using mythological motifs, religious icons, and sometimes deformed or distorted character expressions, she ultimately hints at the possibility of healing our minds and realizing positive alternative situations by confronting those moments. In this exhibition, Wang freely expresses the agony she faces as an artist via her own formative aesthetics, including intense colors and unique ways of describing. Through this, she encapsulates the fear and delight felt as a creator and stimulates deepseated emotions in the viewers.​

Using paper and graphite, Sungoo Im creates multilayered dramas that weave together personal experiences and memories, stories of others and the community. The traces and icons left on paper become entangled, invade each other's space, and create a world of subtle relationships. Recently, Im has shifted from crumpling, tearing, and sewing up paper drawings to transforming them into mass. In this exhibition, she presents wall structures made by smoothing and piecing bits of paper together. The paper walls constructed, precariously supporting each other while occupying the space, mirror numerous scenes of the world that revolves around us and prompt us to contemplate our own approaches to life.​​