[This Week's Exhibitions] Son Eunyoung Solo Exhibition 'Here, Where Life Stays', Kim Taejin & Jung Yoonyoung Duo Exhibition 'The Places Where', and More

Editor’s NoteThis week’s exhibition roundup presents a curated selection of unique and captivating shows from across the country taking place within the week.

Eunyoung Sohn's "Blue Staircase House." The turquoise staircase, sky, and palm trees reconfigure the elements of the real space with unfamiliar colors to reveal the memories imbued in the house and the emotions of the place. Superior Gallery

Son Eunyoung Solo Exhibition ‘Here, Where Life Stays’

Even when a house disappears, the time once lived there does not vanish. Son Eunyoung has long observed houses, alleys, walls, and gardens, translating the memories accumulated in these places into images. In this exhibition as well, the house is not just an architectural structure, but an emotional space where people, nature, and the weight of past time intersect. In particular, the artist adds the unique colors and textures of infrared photography to images of actual locations, transforming familiar homes and alleys into landscapes where reality and imagination converge. Unfamiliar shades, such as teal staircases, vivid skies, and pink-hued alleys, come closer to the feeling of places remembered in one’s memory than reality itself.

Eunyoung Sohn's "Pink Alley." This work transforms familiar houses and alleys into a landscape where reality and imagination overlap through the unique colors of infrared photography. Superior Gallery

When turning one’s gaze to the garden, memories overlap with the passage of nature. The artist’s fascination with gardens began with a childhood encounter with Monet’s ‘Water Lilies,’ and grew to encompass seasonal changes in light, evolving plants, and the scenery surrounding the house. In Son Eunyoung’s work—traversing the sensibility of both photography and painting—a place is not documented as it is. Instead, the focus is on evoking emotions that linger in the arrangement of color, light, and objects even after people have left. This exhibition invites viewers to rediscover ordinary alleys and views outside their windows as places where a life once briefly stayed. The show runs through October 22, at Superior Gallery, Gangnam-gu, Seoul.

Kim Taejin's 'Night, Liquid, Light'. A painting that layers the traces of flowing and colliding colors and lines, combining the sensations of night, light, and fluidity in a single frame. Gallery Chaeyul

Kim Taejin & Jung Yoonyoung Duo Exhibition ‘The Places Where’

Even when arriving at the same place, the pace at which memories and sensations arrive differs. ‘The Places Where,’ a duo exhibition by former teacher and pupil Kim Taejin and Jung Yoonyoung, does not force their works into a single theme; instead, it displays their distinct approaches to composing images side by side. On Kim Taejin’s canvases, external elements—stars, wind, clouds, and glistening water—sweep in and then recede as afterimages. For Jung Yoonyoung, the process is reversed: time remembered and experienced by the body slowly emerges from behind the canvas. Over 30 new works by the two artists unfold at different rhythms, spanning from the basement to the fourth floor of the gallery.

Yoon Young Jung's Between Red Leaves. Using multiple layers of silk, watercolors, gouache, acrylic, and pigment powder are applied to create scenes where plant-like forms and the memories of the body slowly emerge. Gallery Chae Yul

Jung Yoonyoung layers several sheets of thin silk and then builds up watercolor, gouache, acrylic, and pigment powder. The repetition of these fragile layers gives the works a surprisingly solid density, while bodily and plant-like forms appear and then dissipate. Kim Taejin, who has primarily worked on video and installation, began experimenting with drawing last year, and now debuts large-scale paintings, each over size 100, in this show. For him, the canvas is not a space where time flows in a straight line, but a place to pause, return, and rediscover. That is why the sentence after ‘where’ in the exhibition title is left blank. According to Kim, what was in that place changes depending on the time spent there by each viewer. The exhibition continues through November 6 at Gallery Chaeyul, Gangnam-gu, Seoul.

Yoon Youngho's "Man and Woman Running Through the Green Forest." The journey toward a "green forest" where anxiety and hope coexist is depicted through two figures running between long-stretched trees and a faint waxing crescent moon. PageRoom8

Yoon Youngho Solo Exhibition ‘We Move Toward the Green Forest’

The forest is both a place where one loses their way and one that must be entered to find it again. The ‘green forest’ described by Yoon Youngho takes inspiration from Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy.’ The artist translates Dante’s journey through hell, purgatory, and paradise—a search for self—into contemporary landscapes where reality and ideals, substance and illusion, are intertwined. After focusing on early abstract works, Yoon shifted toward figuration around 2020, combining the synesthetic inspiration from Chopin’s ‘Nocturne’ with scenes of night in Seoul. The exhibition’s 17 paintings show how far these unconscious landscapes—once formless—have evolved into tangible shapes.

Youngho Yoon's "Diving into the Unknown." It depicts the moment of entering the unknown world beyond the boundary between reality and illusion through figures diving toward the blue water surface adjacent to the forest. Page Room 8

The green forest is far from just a peaceful paradise—it sometimes burns, is shrouded in darkness, and people are seen running toward it or throwing themselves into the water. In ‘Two Moons and a Waterfall,’ two separate realms—reminiscent of heaven and purgatory—are connected by a stream, and in ‘Man and Woman Running Through the Green Forest,’ a small crescent moon faintly shines in the dark woods. The rough surfaces and intense blue tones, created with oil paint, acrylic, ink, and paste, underscore that this world is both a real landscape and an internal space. For Yoon Youngho, the forest is more an unknown domain where anxiety and hope coexist than a perfected utopia. What matters is not arrival, but the ongoing act of heading in that direction. The exhibition runs through October 17 at Page Room 8, Jongno-gu, Seoul.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.