Mega Galleries Spotlight Rising Korean Painters Kim Hoon-kyu and Jung Hee-min
Creatrip Team
3 months ago
Two global mega-galleries in Seoul — Perrotin and Thaddaeus Ropac — are showcasing new solo exhibitions by Korean artists born in the 1980s. Kim Hoon-kyu (39) at Perrotin Seoul presents “The Players,” large-scale paintings that use the stone-pigment layering technique of Goryeo Buddhist painting (Goryeo buddhafhwa) to depict modern society’s desires and political tensions through crowded animal allegories and clashing dominant colors. Kim layers pigments on silk to achieve delicate detail while addressing religion, belief and contemporary protest imagery. At Thaddaeus Ropac in Hannam, Jung Hee-min (38) shows “Garden of Anguish,” works that transform online images of waves, shells and bark into 3D-modeled textures, then build tactile canvases with gel medium to evoke the Romantic sublime in a digital age — a “landscape painting of the digital era.” Both artists blend tradition and innovation, exploring how old techniques and new technologies can express today’s social and emotional complexities.
