[This Week's Exhibitions] No Jeongran Retrospective, "Dance with Color: From Color to Beyond Color" · Park Seongbae Solo Exhibition "MOVE" and More

Editor's NoteThis weekly exhibition guide introduces a selection of diverse and compelling exhibitions on view across the country during the week.

Giopato & Coombes' "Maehwa Chandelier custom" (2026). Inspired by the moment plum blossoms bloom, Murano glass spheres are arranged like flower buds, capturing light and subtle shifts in color. Giopato & Coombes

Frieze House Seoul: "Illumination" and "Dreamlike"

Light reveals what is before us while also changing what we see and how we see it. "Illumination," the first exhibition in Korea by the U.S.-based Clubhouse Gallery, explores this distinction through paintings by four artists working in and around New York: Alicia Adamovich, Fypher Banks, Julia Cho, and Caleb Han Quintana. Adamovich's organic forms seem to emit light from within the canvas, while Banks uses light and shadow to bring fruits and plants into focus, lending still lifes a psychological presence. Julia Cho reveals and erases forms between fields of color and calligraphic brushstrokes, while Quintana expands contrasts of light and shade into reflections on memory, masculinity, and inner conflict. For these artists, light is not merely illumination; it is a device that determines how images are seen, felt, and remembered.

Caleb Han Quintana’s “The Appaloosa” (2026). The work places a running horse in stark contrast between light and darkness, mythically elevating the animal’s presence. Clubhouse Gallery.

Opening concurrently, Giopato & Coombes' "Dreamlike" makes light itself a material for the works. "Nokori" begins with the idea of gathering and preserving light that is about to disappear, capturing it within the folds of paper and the thickness and layers of Murano glass. "DAL 달 ~ Drawing A Line," which began with a conversation with Lee Bae, transforms a single charcoal stroke into a movement of light seemingly suspended in midair. Inspired by Kim Taeksang's paintings, "Maehwa" captures the moment plum blossoms bloom through subtle shifts in the colors of Murano glass spheres. While one exhibition presents paintings transformed by light, the other shows the process of capturing light, setting it in motion, and turning it into color. Through Nov. 6, Frieze House Seoul, Jung-gu, Seoul.

Noh Jeongran’s “The Story of Azaleas and Four O’Clock Flowers” (1972). This early work evokes memories of flowers and nature from childhood through abstract fields of vivid pink, blue and blue-green. Sungkok Art Museum.

No Jeongran Retrospective, "Dance with Color: From Color to Beyond Color" / Bae Jongheon Solo Exhibition, "Bulmyeon Jesaek: A Gift from Sleepless Days"

The two exhibitions at Sungkok Art Museum push color in opposite directions. No Jeongran builds up and pushes back color, leaving traces of time and life on the canvas, while Bae Jongheon removes color to find the landscapes hidden beneath it. No's first major retrospective, on view in Gallery 1, traces half a century of exploration of color, from her early works in the 1970s to new works from 2026. While studying in the United States in 1975, she encountered Color Field painting and Minimalism, but her use of color turned not toward the formal language of Western abstraction, but toward Korean nature, childhood memories, and the emotions of life. Memories of golden rice fields, jade-colored wells, flowers, and dancheong remain not as recognizable landscapes but as overlapping, seeping colors. Since the 2000s, she has moved beyond the paintbrush, sweeping and wiping the canvas with a broom; more recently, she has expanded color into a bodily act by walking directly on canvases spread across the floor.

Bae Jongheon’s “Sleepless, Clear Skies: Quiet Clamor—A Plasterer’s Trowel, Cracks in a Cement Surface, Urban Dust” (2026). He covered a gold ground with blue, then scraped it away to reveal landscape forms hidden in the cracks of the city. Seongkok Museum of Art.

In Gallery 2, Bae Jongheon paints by erasing instead. In "Bulmyeon Jesaek," he first applies gold paint, covers it with deep blue, then scrapes and wipes away the paint to reveal mountains, rocks, clouds, and water. For the artist, who has found landscapes in cracks and stains on the city's cement walls, sleepless nights are when scenes that usually go unseen emerge. Five video works shown alongside the paintings also transform familiar reality into something strange, as they dwell on limited viewpoints and minor events. While one artist accumulates memories and life by adding color, the other removes color to find the landscapes that were already there. Through Nov. 28, Sungkok Art Museum, Jongno-gu, Seoul.

Park Seongbae’s “MOVE (Cheongnok Sansu)” (2026). Ink and color on jangji, the work simplifies Seongsan Ilchulbong and the sea into fields of blue-green, shifting Jeju’s landscape from a subject to be depicted to one for contemplation. Jeju Gallery

Park Seongbae Solo Exhibition "MOVE"

For Park Seongbae, the sea of Jeju is less a landscape than a way of experiencing the passage of time. Born in Seogwipo, he has painted Jeju's mountains and waters for many years, yet he does not depict familiar places such as Seongsan Ilchulbong, Gwangchigi Beach, and Cheonjeyeon as they appear to tourists. Instead, he seeks to read the time accumulated in the landscape before him and the ever-changing order of nature. At the heart of this, his 10th solo exhibition, is water. Its qualities—flowing to low ground, changing shape according to what contains it, sustaining life, and at times becoming a tremendous force—serve as a way of understanding nature and humanity.

Park Seongbae's "MOVE (Cheonjeyeon)" (2026). Rendered in ink and color on jangji, the work contrasts Cheonjeyeon's dark cliffs with its blue waters, capturing the time held by the water and the depth of nature. Jeju Gallery

"Gwangchigi Yoonseul," "Ilchulbong," "Jeju Sea," and "Cheonjeyeon" are rendered in an array of materials, including ink and color on jangji and ink and acrylic on fabric. In these works, water is not a still subject but a presence in constant motion, accumulating time. The artist says, "Landscape painting is not a painting to look at, but one to read." Rather than take in the mountains and sea at a glance, viewers are invited to wander slowly through the canvas and read the years and memories inscribed in the landscape. The exhibition's title, "MOVE," likewise brings together the movement and cycles of nature and the artist's own transformation as he reaches his 10th solo exhibition. Through Nov. 2, Jeju Gallery, Jongno-gu, Seoul.

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