[This Week's Exhibitions] Sunwang Kwon Solo Exhibition 'A Wave of Pathos', Jeong Jikseong Solo Exhibition 'Marker', and More

Hyojung Cho’s first solo exhibition, "Breath Beyond the Wall," begins with the low and familiar structure of a wall. While a wall divides inside and outside, it also serves as a device that guides the gaze to traverse it. This exhibition translates the artist’s sense of boundaries, distance, and relationships—captured in everyday scenery—into painting.

The canvases feature kiwi trees, ivy, weathered walls, clouded skies, cats and birds perched atop fences. Although nothing dramatic occurs, Hyojung Cho embeds the strata of time spent within these tranquil scenes. In "Kiwi Tree," exuberant leaves and birds slicing through the sky spill over the wall to fill the surface, while a hidden cat remains both a part of the landscape and a presence never fully blended into it.

The power of this exhibition lies in its gaze rather than exaggeration. While the artist renders the landscapes realistically, she recalibrates them through color and composition, like scenes recalled from memory. Thus, the "breath beyond the wall" is less a mere sign of nature and more a trace of a world that is visible yet unreachable, close yet never fully possessed. Hyojung Cho’s paintings quietly record the gaze paused at that boundary. The exhibition runs until June 13 at Hori Art Space, Samcheong-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul.

Currently on view at Page Room 8, Jeong Jikseong’s solo exhibition "Marker" is like a small memorial stone erected between places returned to and people who have departed. After relocating his home and studio to Pungnap-dong last year, the artist confronted the absence of loved ones and memories from his childhood. This exhibition is an effort to engrave those emotions—not as lingering knots, but as works in painting, sculpture, and calligraphy.

The blue landscape hanging in the center of the gallery is both cold and bright. "Spring Snow" and "Spring Mountain" suggest that even mountains, which seem high and solid, are ultimately subject to the passage of time. The "Red House" series on either wall recalls the early "Apartment Complex" works that first brought the artist recognition. The crimson houses appear as isolated masses, detached from their backgrounds, while gray lines and white windows remain as urban traces and scars of memory.

The cement markers and terracotta busts placed on the floor draw out the emotions of the exhibition more directly. Though they speak of death, the exhibition does not sink into darkness. Instead, it invites viewers to reflect on the time one has passed through, the places lived in, and the faces that have been parted with. "Marker" is less a new starting point for Jeong Jikseong’s work than a scene where his fast-paced painting pauses to affirm its own ground and time. The exhibition runs until June 6 at Page Room 8, Ogin-gil, Jongno-gu, Seoul.

Sunwang Kwon’s solo exhibition "A Wave of Pathos" approaches nature not as landscape, but as a structure of emotion. The canvases feature tree branches, red berries, blue skies, and wave-like color fields; yet, rather than depicting specific places, these elements serve as devices to capture the traces left by love, relationships, and memories.

In the first work, black branches and red berries traverse a bluish-green background, creating a gaze that drifts through the landscape as if on a stroll. In the second, blue waves, black forms, and pink petal-like color masses push and pull against one another. Concrete objects remain loosely present, but the core of the composition lies in the rhythm and flow of emotion rather than representation.

As the title "Pathos" suggests, the crux of this exhibition is in indirectly conveying emotional intensity through the undulation of color and line, rather than directly expressing excess emotion. Nature is not merely a backdrop, but a body where emotion momentarily resides; the blurring and traces throughout the canvases hint at the distance, warmth, and tension left by love. Sunwang Kwon’s paintings gently persuade viewers that to look at landscapes is also to follow the currents within oneself. The exhibition runs until June 24 at Artcube 2R2, Seolleung-ro, Gangnam-gu, Seoul.