Jieun Cheon Solo Exhibition
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Origami Hermit Crab: Order to Labyrinth
by Suechung Koh
​Curated by Sooa Lim
February 3–8, 2026
ArtCake, Brooklyn
214 40th Street, Brooklyn, NY, 11232
Installation view. â“’ Jieun Cheon
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Origami Hermit Crab: Order to Labyrinth is a solo exhibition by New York–based multidisciplinary artist Jieun Cheon that presents an immersive installation structured around perceptual instability, spatial ambiguity, and speculative myth-making. Installed on the second floor of ArtCake, the exhibition transforms the studio into a navigable environment that resists linear movement and clear orientation, encouraging visitors to experience the work through bodily navigation as much as visual observation.
At the center of the exhibition is Origami Hermit Crab, a multi-part installation that visualizes a fictional island formed by a giant hermit crab. This imagined terrain exists within Cheon’s ongoing conceptual universe, Uncanished Workld—a hybrid construct merging notions of the uncanny and the unfinished. Rather than offering a cohesive narrative, the installation functions as a fragmented map, situating viewers in an in-between space where perception, memory, and imagination intersect.
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Left: The Anti-Fractal Map I, 2023 -24 Right; The Anti-Fractal Map II, 2024 â“’ Jieun Cheon
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Cheon’s work draws from a wide range of references, including the ancient myth of Aspidochelone, fractal theory, and architectural and geological traces encountered in historically layered sites. These sources are not illustrated directly but are abstracted into formal and spatial systems. Folded and unfolded paper serves as a foundational structure, with crease lines forming a grid that suggests latent order. Onto this framework, Cheon layers architectural motifs and natural forms, generating what she terms “anti-fractal” labyrinth patterns—structures that imply navigability while ultimately producing disorientation.
These patterns are transferred onto silk, which functions symbolically as the shell of the hermit crab island. The translucency and softness of the silk contrast with the precision of the pen-drawn lines, producing a tension between fragility and structure. The drawings, collectively titled The Anti-Fractal Map, operate simultaneously as cartographic devices and as records of accumulated time, echoing the artist’s interest in historical sedimentation and entangled cultural memory.
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Left: The Anti-Fractal Map IV, 2026 Right: Closer view of 'The Anti-Fractal Map IV' with 'Demagnified z-axis' â“’ Jieun Cheon
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At the installation’s center are two rainbow quartz sculptures titled Demagnified z-axis. Positioned as the crab’s body and eyes, the quartz elements introduce a vertical axis that complicates the otherwise planar logic of the maps. Their reflective and refractive qualities invite shifting visual perspectives, functioning less as focal points than as perceptual mediators between the physical space and the viewer’s subjective experience.
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Throughout the exhibition, Cheon avoids didactic clarity in favor of experiential uncertainty. The installation offers moments of apparent order that gradually dissolve into labyrinthine complexity, foregrounding the limits of rational mapping and fixed interpretation. Movement through the space becomes an act of negotiation rather than discovery, emphasizing pause, recalibration, and imaginative projection.
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Overall, Origami Hermit Crab: Order to Labyrinth presents a cohesive yet open-ended environment in which material, myth, and spatial logic converge. Cheon’s integration of drawing, textile, and sculptural elements results in a contemplative installation that engages viewers through disorientation rather than spectacle, positioning perception itself as the primary subject of inquiry.
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Suechung Koh
Suechung Koh is a New York– and New Jersey–based curator and founder of Paris Koh Fine Arts. With over a decade of experience curating exhibitions in Chelsea, New York, and across New Jersey, her practice centers on cross-cultural dialogue and conceptually driven contemporary art.
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She has held curatorial and directorial positions at Hyun Contemporary, Gallery d’Arte, Elga Wimmer PCC, Tenri Gallery, KCC Gallery, and FT Gallery. In 2024, she founded Asian American Art Review Magazine, serving as Chief Editor and advancing critical discourse on contemporary and Asian American art.​
Koh studied Curatorial Studies under Professor Thalia Vrachopoulos, Ph.D., and her curatorial approach emphasizes intellectual rigor, cultural context, and meaningful engagement with contemporary artistic practices.​​