New Vision Korean Female Abstraction

2026. 8. 15 – 10. 11

Jung Jong Mee, Lee Hyun Joung, Kang Eemyun, Whee, Roh Gippeum and Estelle Tcha

New Vision: Korean Female Abstraction brings together six significant Korean women artists whose practices expand the language of contemporary abstraction through material innovation, gestural expression, and poetic explorations of nature, memory, and perception. Working across ink, charcoal, oil, handmade paper, and richly layered surfaces, Jung Jong Mee, Lee Hyun Joung, Kang EemYun, Cha Won Hee (Whee), Roh Gippeum and Estelle Tcha each transform abstraction into deeply tactile, immersive, and sensory experiences. While their visual languages are distinct, they share a commitment to material sensitivity and an intuitive dialogue between the physical world and inner experience, revealing the remarkable breadth and vitality of contemporary Korean abstraction.
Rather than treating abstraction as purely formal, these artists approach the surface as a living field shaped by rhythm, memory, movement, and time. Through repetition, layering, and physical interaction with materials, their works reveal an intimate dialogue between body, medium, and environment.

Jung Jong Mee is known for lyrical abstraction rooted in traditional Korean materials and a philosophy of nature. Building up layers of pigment and dye on traditional ramie cloth, she captures the spirit of the sea and nature drawn from Yun Seon-do’s sijo poem “Song of the Fisherman.”

Lee Hyun Joung creates rhythmic compositions using ink on hanji. Through repeated flowing lines, she dissolves familiar landscape forms, replacing them with wave-like undulating space — a meditative surface carrying the temporality of water, wind, and geology.

Kang EemYun builds abstraction through layered oil surfaces and restrained brushwork. Within compositions where the everyday, memory, and the passage of time intertwine, an emotional density condenses — drawing the viewer slowly into its immersive pull.

Whee builds up the rough textures of charcoal and pastel, moving fluidly between collage, sculpture, and painting. The traces embedded across her surfaces evoke both fragments of memory and processes of organic growth, striking a precarious balance between fragility and material presence.

Estelle Tcha composes her surfaces through fluid forms, layered color, and symbolic imagery drawn from nature and Eastern philosophy. Reflecting on cyclical time, the interconnection of all things, and unseen currents of energy, she leads viewers into a contemplative space of harmony and movement.

Roh Gippeum moves between painting and ceramics, exploring how perception shapes form before meaning intervenes. Trained in ceramics at Seoul National University, she carries a sculptural sensitivity — an awareness of weight, volume, touch, and the slow rhythm of matter taking form — into her paintings. She seeks to encounter objects as they are, stripped of the names, functions, and social roles assigned to them, prior to language itself; what emerges on the canvas are unfamiliar images, familiar forms dissolved and reassembled into shadow, mass, and rhythm.

WEBSITE INSTAGRAM ARTSY