ARTISTS SHINE AT PARIS KOH FINE ARTS
by Jeanne Brasile
Paris Koh Fine Arts is a gallery known for sensitively curated exhibitions with an emphasis on materiality and gesture. Artworks have understated visual qualities that yield to a variety of rich conversations, often situated around spiritual themes and sophisticated, layered meanings. “The Vibration of Stars,” curated in collaboration with PHJ Gallery of Seoul, features fourteen emerging artists from South Korea. Each artist’s unique voice emanates from the work which ranges from monochrome ink drawings to brightly colored paintings with areas of impossibly high relief. Despite the differing approaches to artmaking, there is something other worldly that holds the work together thematically, while the visuals skim the line between figuration and abstraction.
Hong Star, STAR-Energy, 116.8x91 Cm, Acrylic on Canvas, 2024
Arch. Son Domoon, Road, Mixed media on Canvas, 90.9x72.7cm, 2023
This sense of dissolution is apparent in the work of Hong Star, whose STAR Energy greets passersby from the front window. The bright blue painting appears to be a melting star viewed head-on. From the side the painting morphs into a sculptural mountain of paint extending inches from the canvas. The blue palette is interrupted by vibrant drips of yellow, red, white, and green - the technique enhancing the melting visual effect. The work addresses the unfixed nature of the universe and the energetic body.
Sonh Domoon is an architect, and his two exuberant mixed media canvasses, Bright and Road explore space, form, materiality, and color. His richly layered arrangements of small bits of material and paint read like a page of text in an indecipherable book, but also the exploded innards of an electronic device. In an unusual turn, the architect trades an exploration of three-dimensional space into investigations of two dimensions. This abstracted visual language – with no purpose like the built environment – allows Domoon to delight in the purely creative act.
YoungJo Choi, Melody and Rhythm, Korean traditional Jangji paper, Ink Animal glue, 80 x 198cm, 2025
HyungGon Lee, A Landscape of Wu-Wei II-244, Japanese lacquer & gold dust on board, 100x80.3cm, 2024
YoungJo Choi’s Melody and Rhythm also relies on gesture, but Choi’s ink painting on traditional Korean paper is monochrome, relying on line and mark-making to express the artist’s thoughts. The tall, rectangular ink drawing is gridded along the horizontal and vertical axes,
which is then superimposed with a series of irregular lines that appear as plants growing from a pond, a forgotten alphabet, or even musical notes. There is a quiet sensibility to the work that calls to mind a meditative state for making, as well as viewing, the art. Appearing at once spontaneous and planned, its arrangements of rigid and organic lines both reveal and conceal the subject of the work. The network of horizontal and vertical lines educes burlap or canvas fabric which plays wonderfully against the adjacent work of HyungGon Lee.
HyungGon Lee’s A Landscape of Wu-Wei II – 243 and 244 with their restrained palette of gold, black and brown draws the viewer’s attention to the central rectangular forms set against subtly organized layers of circles and hatched lines. The central rectangular forms rendered in brilliant gold dust radiate, suggesting the spiritual qualities of light. The reference to divinity is reinforced by the process of lacquering which requires exactitude of application. Thus, Lee’s pieces not only depict mysticism, but they become ritual objects, binding process and subject in an inseparable, sacred dialogue.
HyoSun Kang, Ive got the medicine, 100x88 cm, carved and painting on wood, 2024
Jin Ja Jung, Paradise within: 20201021-I&II, Acrylic on Canvas, 53.8 x 45cm, 2021
Jin Ja Jung is similarly dualistic in their approach to painting. Paradise I and Paradise II appear initially as the time-honored subject of the lotus, but here, the leaf, not the more picturesque flower is given importance. The green and purple leaves appear to hover in water, or perhaps deep space. Looking at the leaves more closely, their washy forms begin to resemble biological organisms or even cosmic worlds colliding. The stems become neural forms, the pathways for energy to travel within this shifting, uncertain realm.
I’ve Got the Medicine by HyoSun Kang is a large carved wooden panel with a central circular form in blue set against a reddish-brown ground. The work resembles an oversized wood block used for printing, but this carved relief is the art and not the means to create it. The blue circle is bisected with a vertical line from which a series of horizontal lines sweep sidelong to the circle’s edge. The background is incised with a series of horizontal lines organized into columns rendered in an earthy red color. Both the circle and the background vibrate with undulating lines that signal energy and wavelengths of light. The vibrational qualities emanate from the work’s surface that almost seems to glow from within under the gallery lighting.
YoungAe Lee, Traces No. 61, Mixed Media on Wood Panel, 58 × 60 cm, 2025
Ju Young Im, Essence, Color on Korean Jangji paper, 116.8 × 91 Cm, 2025
Traces No. 61 by YoungAe Lee uses the circle as a point of departure. Using a neutral palette of white, tan, and black, the background of pale circles packed closely together forms a secondary diamond pattern in the negative space between shapes. The washy white circles reveal the brush strokes and gestures enacted in the making of the work. The circles are irregular, created in a spirited act of making, rather than a desire for perfection. A series of five black collaged shapes skip across the surface, in gestures akin to writing. The work is pure form, the circle functioning as a symbol of balance and mastery through repetition.
Ju Young Im’s Essence is a bridge at the midpoint of the show and functions as a transitional piece. More assertively figurative than the work in the first half of the exhibition, Im’s painting on traditional Korean Jangji paper depicts a headless body holding open its abdominal cavity to reveal toothy pink shapes that read as organs or flowers, but either way, it’s an alluring menace that spills outward to the viewer. The complexity of the work is heightened by the background - an undefined dark blue field which suggests outer space - where truncated figure stands. The self and the environment are conflated in a dialogue about the inner and outer realms of human existence.
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Geum Hee Lee, Creation and Disappearance in the Passage of Time II, Silkscreen, 79 x 55 cm, 2024
Siwon, Faces, Acrylic on Canvas, 72.7x90 cm, 2025
Geum Hee Lee uses overlapping graphic imagery in her silkscreen Creation and Disappearance in the Passage of Time which features bold colors and objects that evoke quiet memories; empty stairwells, bare winter trees, a golden sun, and bright flowers. The objects become memory triggers while creating a series of visual rhymes. The objects are equally signifiers of passing time via references to the four seasons. Barren tree branches of high winter are shown against the abundant flowers of summer and stairwells act as transitional spaces from season to season, or from birth to death.
Faces by Siwon is a colorful painting with washy drips running down the surface. The painting is organized into a series of unequal block shapes over which mountains emerge. The space is eerily empty despite the spate of trickly colored lines which dissolve into geometric parcels that become more saturated toward the foreground. On the lower right of the canvas is a diminutive home. This arrangement gives the scene a feeling of loneliness despite the bright colors and energetic gestures in paint. The conflation of the mountains and the lone building sets up a discourse on contemporary society’s dependence on the built environment which has supplanted our relationship to nature.
OkRang Oh, Marilyn Monroe,162.2x130.3cm, Acrylic on canvas, 2018
Hoon Kang, MUTHUL (무술), 145.5 x 112 cm, acrylic on canvas, 2024
OkRang Oh’s acrylic painting Marilyn Monroe makes more direct statements about humanity’s relationship to the built environment, particularly the modern city. The painting depicts densely stacked homes when viewed close up. From a distance, the visage of Marilyn Monroe comes into focus. Oh’s superimposition of the Hollywood icon’s portrait with homes – both emblems of The American Dream - become a potent statement on longing and mass consumer culture.
Hoon Kang similarly invokes mythic figures, but the supernatural sort. CRU FINAL reverberates with densely packed imagery formed by linework and shapes that radiate from the central figure emerging from a busy background. Looking like a monster, god, animal, and tree trunk – the form is menacing with a powerful stance and muscular appendages. This monstrous form could be a hero or a villain in a comic book, or a beast from the dark corners of our minds. The multifarious figure elicits responses that relate to the viewer’s personal mythos, or inner demons.
Youngseok Gwon, Insomnia, Acrylic on canvas, 72.7x60.6x3.5 cm, 2024
JinHyun Nam, Cest la vie, 90cm X 72cm, Acrylic on canvas, 2024
Youngseok Gwon imbues her subjects with nervous tension, the figures are perhaps a tad frightening. Gaunt faces stare back at the viewer from a busy field of bright colors and black lines that writhe with anxiety. Though recognizable as faces, each of the six visages from the Insomnia series appears to be on the edge of complete dissolution. Insomnia I looks more like a bundle of nerve tissue than a face. Only proximity to the other five paintings help viewers piece together the barely there image of a face. The current human condition is deftly expressed in this work that conflates anxiety with sleeplessness.
JinHyun Nam’s acrylic paintings are full of affect as well. Though Nam’s paintings speak more broadly to the fragmented nature of human existence and the complexity of the self. Almost mask-like in appearance, the expressions in each of his portraits oddly seem both perplexed and unperturbed. The portraits are made of individual compartments of shape and color that are thickly outlined in black. C’est la vie is the most interesting of the four. Its face appears to dissolve into pure form as one views it.
Despite the number of works on view in this smallish gallery, the show is sensitively balanced and paced, showing each of the artists to good advantage. The groupings and adjacencies of the works also coax meaning and dialogue among the artists and individual artworks. Each of the artists addresses notions of energy, spirituality and humanity in this show that generates reflection on the many facets of the human condition.
파리스코 파인 아트에서 빛난 작가들
글: 진 브라자일(Jeanne Brasile)
파리코 파인 아트(Paris Koh Fine Arts)는 물성과 제스처에 중점을 두며 섬세하게 기획된 전시로 잘 알려진 갤러리다. 이곳에서 선보이는 작품들은 절제된 시각 언어를 통해 다층적이고 영적인 의미들을 이끌어내며 풍부한 대화를 유도한다. 이번에 서울의 PHJ 갤러리와 협력하여 기획한 별들의 진동(The Vibration of Stars) 전시는 한국의 신진 작가 14인을 소개하며, 먹의 단색화부터 화려한 고부조 회화에 이르기까지 다양한 매체와 스타일의 작업들을 아우른다. 표현 방식은 서로 다르지만, 추상과 구상의 경계를 유영하며 비현실적이고 초월적인 감각이 전시 전반을 유기적으로 연결한다.
홍스타(Hong Star)의 STAR Energy는 갤러리 전면 창에 전시되어 관객을 맞이한다. 정면에서는 푸른 별이 녹아내리는 듯 보이고, 측면에서는 화면에서 몇 인치 돌출된 조각적 형태가 산처럼 솟아오른다. 청색을 바탕으로 노랑, 빨강, 흰색, 녹색의 유채가 흘러내리는 모습은 우주의 유동성과 에너지 체에 대한 탐구로 읽힌다.
건축가 손도문(Sonh Domoon)은 Bright와 Road라는 두 개의 혼합 매체 회화를 통해 공간, 형태, 재료, 색채를 실험한다. 잘게 잘린 재료와 페인트가 겹겹이 얹힌 화면은 해독 불가능한 텍스트이자, 분해된 전자기기의 내부처럼 보인다. 건축가가 삼차원에서 이차원으로 전환하며, 실용성과 목적을 떠난 순수한 창작의 즐거움을 만끽하는 것이다.
최영조(YoungJo Choi)의 Melody and Rhythm은 한지 위에 수묵으로 작업된 단색화로, 수평과 수직의 격자 위에 식물처럼, 문자처럼, 혹은 악보처럼 보이는 불규칙한 선들이 더해진다. 즉흥성과 계획성이 공존하는 선의 배열은 명상적인 분위기를 자아내며, 주제를 드러내기도 하고 은폐하기도 한다. 화면의 구조는 마치 삼베나 캔버스 천을 연상시키며 인접한 이형곤 작가의 작품과도 조화를 이룬다.
이형곤(HyungGon Lee)의 A Landscape of Wu-Wei II – 243과 244는 금, 검정, 갈색의 절제된 색채 속에서 중앙의 직사각형이 금가루로 찬란하게 빛난다. 화면에 정교하게 배치된 원과 선 위에 떠 있는 듯한 이 형태는 신성함과 영성을 드러내며, 수십 번 반복된 옻칠 기법은 작품 그 자체를 의식의 대상이자 의례적 오브제로 승화시킨다.
정진자(Jin Ja Jung)의 Paradise I, II는 연꽃이라는 전통적 소재를 다루면서도 그 꽃이 아닌 잎에 주목한다. 화면을 떠다니는 듯한 초록과 보라빛 잎들은 생물학적 유기체 같기도 하고 우주의 충돌처럼도 보인다. 줄기는 신경망을 연상시키며, 불안정한 세계 속 에너지 흐름을 암시한다.
강효선(HyoSun Kang)의 I’ve Got the Medicine은 조각된 대형 목판 형식으로, 파란 원형 중심과 적갈색 배경이 대비를 이루며 시각적 에너지를 발산한다. 원은 수직선을 중심으로 수평선이 방사형으로 펼쳐지며 파장과 빛의 진동을 시각화하고, 전체적으로는 인쇄용 목판처럼 보이지만 그 자체가 완성된 예술작품이다.
이영애(YoungAe Lee)의 Traces No. 61은 원형을 주된 형태로 삼는다. 흰색, 베이지, 검정의 중성적인 색상으로 채워진 화면은 무수한 붓자국을 통해 반복적 행위의 흔적을 남기며, 불완전한 원형의 집합은 조화와 균형의 추구를 상징한다. 화면 위를 가로지르는 다섯 개의 검은 콜라주 조각은 마치 문자처럼 리듬감 있는 시각 언어를 형성한다.
임주영(Ju Young Im)의 Essence는 전시의 중간 지점에서 변곡점 역할을 한다. 전시 초반부의 추상적 분위기에서 점점 구상적 서사로 이행하는 작품으로, 머리 없는 인체가 복부를 열고 장기 혹은 꽃 같은 형상을 드러낸다. 배경의 짙은 푸른빛은 우주를 연상시키며, 자아와 환경의 경계를 허물며 인간 존재의 내면과 외면을 탐구한다.
이금희(Geum Hee Lee)는 실크스크린 Creation and Disappearance in the Passage of Time을 통해 기억의 잔상과 시간의 흐름을 주제로 한다. 나무, 해, 꽃, 계단 등의 이미지가 반복되며 사계절과 삶의 순환을 상징하는 시각적 운율을 형성한다.
시원(Siwon)의 Faces는 색이 흘러내리는 듯한 회화로, 불균형한 블록 위에 산의 형태가 드러난다. 색감은 화려하지만 쓸쓸한 분위기를 자아내며, 현대 사회의 자연과 단절된 구조를 은유적으로 비판한다. 구석에 놓인 작은 집은 산과의 대비 속에서 인간과 자연의 소외된 관계를 암시한다.
오옥랑(OkRang Oh)의 Marilyn Monroe는 미국 도시의 소비문화와 욕망을 직설적으로 표현한다. 가까이서 보면 촘촘히 쌓인 주택들이, 멀리서 보면 마릴린 먼로의 얼굴로 보이며, 아메리칸 드림의 양면성과 대중문화의 이면을 드러낸다.
강훈(Hoon Kang)의 CRU FINAL은 괴물인지 신인지, 동물인지 나무인지 모를 형상이 화면 중심에서 솟아오른다. 만화 속 히어로 같기도 하고 무의식의 어둠에서 기어 나온 존재 같기도 하다. 보는 이의 내면 신화와 무의식적 공포를 자극하는 복합적 형상이다.
권영석(Youngseok Gwon)의 Insomnia 연작은 불면과 불안을 시각화한 작품으로, 여섯 개의 얼굴은 형상이 무너질 듯 위태롭다. 선명하지 않은 이목구비와 날카로운 선들은 현대인의 신경질적인 감정 상태를 상징하며, 개별 작품이 아닌 연작으로 보아야 전체 얼굴의 실루엣이 드러난다.
남진현(JinHyun Nam)의 아크릴 회화는 자아의 분열과 인간 존재의 복잡성을 드러낸다. 검은 선으로 구획된 형상과 색면은 마치 가면처럼 보이며, 개별적 감정이 혼재된 복잡한 인상을 준다. C’est la vie는 이 중에서도 가장 흥미로운 작품으로, 얼굴이 순수한 형상으로 해체되어가는 듯한 인상을 준다.
작품 수가 많음에도 불구하고 이 소규모 갤러리는 절제된 큐레이션과 전시 동선으로 각 작가의 개성을 효과적으로 드러낸다. 작품 간의 배치와 연계는 상호 의미를 증폭시키며, 전시는 에너지, 영성, 인간성에 대한 고찰을 통해 관객에게 인간 조건의 다양한 측면에 대해 사유할 기회를 제공한다.
Jeanne Brasile is currently the Director of the Walsh Gallery at Seton Hall University. She earned her Bachelor’s Degree at Ramapo College of New Jersey with a concentration in art history and studio art, and a Master’s Degree in Museum Studies from Seton Hall University. She has taught graduate classes in museum studies and art history at the undergraduate level and is also an independent curator, artist and frequent lecturer on such topics as public art, curatorial practice and institutional critique. During her career of over 20 years, she has curated numerous shows throughout New York and New Jersey and worked at institutions such as Storm King Art Center, The South Street Seaport Museum and the Montclair State University Art Galleries. Philosophically, she sees the gallery as a place for asking questions rather than a framework for imposing meaning. She is most interested in developing exhibitions that challenge visitors to re-think their perceptions of art, art-making and the role of the museum/gallery.
Chief Editor: Paris Koh