Kang Seok Ho @ Tina Kim Gallery, NYC - 'Hold Still' Exhibition

Kang Seok Ho: Hold Still 

Tina Kim Gallery, New York 

November 20, 2025 – January 24, 2026 

The winter sea the eyes have seen is wider than itself.

—Kang Seok Ho, Seeing, 2017

Tina Kim Gallery presents Kang Seok Ho: Hold Still, the gallery’s second solo exhibition of the late Korean artist. Bringing together Kang’s Couple and Nude paintings—created between the mid-2010s and 2021—the exhibition traces the artist’s sustained engagement with the human figure as a site for exploring painterly surface, materiality, and form. Depicting bodies and intertwined faces yet stripped of narrative and erotic intent, these works reflect Kang’s deep fixation on painting itself—and his fascination with how the effort to see and depict another contains the paradox of closeness and distance inherent in human relationships.

Kang Seok Ho (1971–2021) studied sculpture at Seoul National University and trained under Jan Dibbets at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, receiving his MFA in 2001 before returning to Seoul. His contemporaries included Park Chan-kyong, Haegue Yang, Chung Seoyeong, and Kim Beom, among others. At a time when the critical discourse in Korea revolved around multimedia and conceptual practices, Kang Seok Ho turned instead to the language of painting itself. He studied the Old Masters—both Western and Eastern—and was particularly drawn to the techniques of Piero della Francesca, Giorgione, and Tintoretto, whose treatment of color and light he admired in their depictions of skin. Yet Kang deliberately resisted virtuosity, developing a distinctive method of tapping a brush dipped in thinned paint to build up delicate, uniform layers, creating textured surfaces where pigment both reveals and mimics the weave of the linen beneath. Informed by the philosophy of East Asian landscape painting—which privileges the subjective interpretation of nature over direct representation—Kang approached every subject, including the human figure, as a kind of landscape: a terrain for exploring gesture, surface, and dimensionality in paint.

Kang’s methods, however, were distinctly contemporary, exemplified by his use of photographic sources—first explored in his Get Up series, which zoomed in on clothed torsos and buttocks, omitting faces and other identifiers. Working from photographs—some his own, others drawn from media—he isolated and enlarged fragments of images, taping off sections to re-angle and translate them onto canvas. Focusing on details such as the wrinkles in denim where thighs meet or the beads of a necklace resting against a collarbone, the Get Up paintings became Kang’s first anonymous portraits, turning the body into a rhythm of folds, seams, and reflections: quiet abstractions that reveal his fascination with the everyday as a site of intimacy.

This process of cropping and re-framing became central to his later Couple and Nude series. For the Couple paintings, begun after 2016, Kang Seok Ho focused on compositions of two figures sharing a single frame, zooming into moments of touch and proximity in photographs drawn from social media or film stills. What might appear to mark a turn toward narrative was, for him, a continuation of his formal and material concerns—now directed toward the tension and harmony between forms sharing a pictorial surface: clasped hands, entwined arms, and faces pressed together. His interest lay not in depicting two individuals, but in capturing the fleeting moments of convergence or intimacy between them.

These investigations of the body as landscape evolved into the Nude series, where the artist magnified his gaze still further, turning his attention to the texture, creases, and folds of skin. Cropped tightly on the décolletage, navel, or buttocks, these paintings subvert the conventions of the nude, lingering between disclosure and restraint. In one painting, a few strands of ebony hair splay across a softly dappled expanse of skin; in others, peaches and grapes—perhaps a nod to nudes in Western art—partially obscure the body, leaving the viewer uncertain of what is being revealed or withheld. Viewers often interpreted these works as erotic, a reading Kang Seok Ho resisted.

In the late 2010s, Kang Seok Ho pushed the compositions of the Couple paintings further inward, enlarging his canvases to focus on the eyes of two individuals. In some, two faces adjoin edge to edge, their shared boundary forming a seam; in others, one face passes another, half-visible, half-withheld. Eventually, the faces nearly overlap, merging into a single eye-like form—a meeting point of color and light akin to a solar eclipse. In his final group of Nude paintings, created for a 2021 exhibition shortly before his death, Kang Seok Ho concentrated his gaze on the belly button—the body’s physical and metaphorical center. Perhaps his most intimate works, these paintings anchor folds and crevices of skin within expanses of color that verge on abstraction.

The exhibition’s title, Hold Still, refers to Kang’s working process of selecting an image and re-framing it to fit the proportions of his canvas. This became a way of reconstructing chance, visually compelling moments encountered amid the sensory excess of contemporary life and translating these images from the immediacy of photography to the slower temporality of paint. The images, held still by the artist’s intention, become his paintings—and in turn, invite viewers to look with the same attentiveness.

 

Although Kang’s work has only recently begun to receive wider international recognition, his influence within Korea’s painting community was deeply felt during his lifetime. As an artist, curator, and writer, he helped shape the discourse on contemporary art, organizing group exhibitions such as Good Form (Insa Art Space, 2005), Manner in Korean Paintings (Hite Collection, 2012), and When Words Fail (Hite Collection, 2016). His writings on everyday experiences—plainspoken yet lyrical—echoed the tone of his paintings, reflecting an ongoing search for clarity that always left space for uncertainty.

 

Kang’s passing in 2021 left his inquiries open-ended. Yet in his Couple and Nude paintings—where forms meet, merge, or drift apart—he captured something of the fragility of connection itself. His paintings do not seek to resolve the tension between self and other, painter and viewer, figure and ground; rather, they hold that tension quietly, discovering comfort in the unsettled.

Artist Kang Seok Ho

Kang Seok Ho received his Bachelor of Fine Art in sculpture at Seoul National University, then left for Germany to study with Jan Dibbets (b. 1941) at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where he received his Masters of Fine Art in painting. After winning the UBS Art Award in Basel, Switzerland in 2000, he returned to Korea and won the Seoknam Art Prize (Seoul, Korea) in 2004, and he was the selected artist for Young Korean Artists 2008: I AM AN ARTIST by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art. From 2003 to 2020, he held 16 solo exhibitions at Insa Art Space, Kumho Museum of Art, and Mimesis Art Museum. Beyond his artistic practice, Kang Seok Ho was also active as a curator, organizing group exhibitions featuring his peers and younger artists, as well as design shows inspired by his personal passion for modern European and American design. Exhibitions curated by Kang include Good Form (Insa Art Space, 2005), Manner in Korean Paintings (Hite Collection, 2012), When Words Fail (Hite Collection, 2016), and Bauhaus and Modern Life (Kumho Museum of Art, 2019). Not separating his daily life and art, he led meetings to interact with fellow artists on the subjects of painting, books, music, hiking, and fishing. He taught as a professor at Seoul National University of Science and Technology from 2018 to 2021, and his first retrospective, seok ho kang: Three Minute Delight (2022-2023) was held at the Seoul Museum of Art in the first year after his untimely death in 2021. His debut solo exhibition with Tina Kim Gallery was held in 2023.

TINA KIM GALLERY 

525 West 21st Street, New York, NY 10011

tinakimgallery.com

Ding Yi @ Lisson Gallery, London - 'The Road to Heaven' Exhibition

Ding Yi: The Road to Heaven

Lisson Gallery, London

Through 22 November 2025

For his inaugural solo exhibition at Lisson Gallery and his first return to exhibit in London in over five years, renowned Chinese abstractionist Ding Yi presents a new body of work. This latest series is deeply informed by the history and cosmology of the Naxi people of Yunnan in southwestern China, offering a rich cultural and conceptual dimension to his distinctive visual language. In line with his larger corpus, the artist’s latest drawings and paintings employ a systematic iconography in the service of a layered, subjective response – a continuous act of translation rather than a fixed text.   

In 1988, while a student at Shanghai University, Ding Yi adopted the cross, either in the form of a ‘+’ or ‘x’ symbol, as a leitmotif. Initially arranging crosses in strict grids, he later developed complex geometric patterns in fluorescent colours, producing works that mirrored the architectural and economic explosion of Shanghai in the late 1990s and early 2000s.  Since 2011, Ding Yi has shifted toward a broader perspective, exploring themes of the cosmos, nature, and the universe, gradually moving beyond the strict rationality of his earlier work toward a more emotive and intuitive sensibility. Following his 2022 solo exhibition in Tibet, he began to engage more deeply with specific cultural and geographic contexts, with recent works reflecting a turn inward—toward spiritual reflection and contemplative states.

In 2024, following three research visits to Yunnan and in-depth conversations with scholars and Dongba priests, Ding Yi studied and internalised the texts and beliefs of the Dongba religion—an ancient tradition blending animism and Tibetan Buddhism. This belief system is preserved through sacred manuscripts composed in a unique pictographic script – the most significant and visually striking being The Road to Heaven. Used in funerary rituals, the long scroll depicts the soul’s symbolic passage from the earthly realm to the afterlife, and lends its title to this exhibition.

Drawing from the scroll’s visual and spiritual resonance, Ding Yi created a group of works executed on coarse-fibred Dongba paper using acrylic and water-soluble coloured pencil. These compositions reinterpret The Road to Heaven through his signature cross motif. The drawing transposes the Dongba writing system into a sequence of intricate schemes, each composed from a dense array of crosses. In this fusion of Dongba cosmology and his distinctive abstraction, Ding Yi invites viewers to perceive two worlds at once—entwined yet distinct in sensibility. Featured in the exhibition is The Road to Heaven 2024-B17, a four-panel work on Dongba paper. Each panel alludes to the transmigration of the soul through allegorical topographies: Nine Black Mountains, The Underworld, The Natural World, and Heaven.

The exhibition also features a suite of horizontal-format works on Dongba paper, continuing his iconic Appearance of Crosses series. For Ding Yi, works on paper hold a vital place in his practice, serving as both experimentation and refinement. In these, tiny crosses applied in various colours form mosaic-like compositions that oscillate between microcosmic and macrocosmic resonance. Blocks of dense black hatching – inset with constellatory motifs – echo the starry skies that have featured in Ding Yi’s works for two decades. Elsewhere, streaming blue diagonals conjure the two fundamental elements of life,  according to the Naxi – ‘Qi’ (energy) and water, linking to the ‘Twenty-eight mansions’ of Naxi astrology: the nightly resting places of the moon.

A group of larger relief paintings, rendered in chiselled basswood, features tiered zigzags that evoke the sacred Hengduan mountains of Yunnan in the guise of psychedelic abstraction. Coloured diagonals offset the faint underlying grid, while bold geometry, as often in Ding Yi’s art, compresses a sense of the minute, the handmade and the contingent, reflected in the tiny carved compartments that constitute each painting.

Ding Yi defined the first two stages of his career in terms of ‘steadying’ (the cultivation of a formal language) and ‘overlooking’ (the application of that language to the rapidly evolving world around him). The third, ongoing stage is that of ‘looking up’ – of widening his horizons, both spatial and temporal, to the cosmos and its ancient conceptualisations. The mathematical construction of his works belies a deep interest in the idiosyncratic and irrational dimensions of human thought and cultural tradition. The cross itself – at once Modernist and pre-modern, personal and functional – encapsulates the beguiling duality of his art. As curator Cui Cancan has observed, the “Winding Path” of Ding Yi’s practice “has no terminus – it sways fiercely between the poles of locality and globalisation.” The series of work featured in this exhibition is also on view at Ding Yi: The Winding Path at Contemporary Gallery Kunming and Anthropology Museum of Yunnan University, China, until 9 November 2025.

Artist Ding Yi

A leading figure in Chinese contemporary art, Ding Yi works across painting, sculpture, installation, and architecture. Since the late 1980s, his signature motif—the cross “+” and its variant “x”—has served as a symbol of structure, rationality, and a visual language exploring the essence of being. Trained in both art and design, Ding Yi began experimenting with abstraction in 1982. During his student years, he developed a strong conviction about how to paint and what kind of artist he would become. Rejecting the Expressionism and Surrealism then prevalent in China, he chose a rational path “free from ideology.” Profoundly influenced by Western artists such as Piet Mondrian and Frank Stella during the 1985 “New Wave” art movement, Ding Yi launched his iconic Appearance of Crosses series in 1988, aiming to create “an ultimate impression of abstraction”. At the time, he “designed” paintings resembling plans for fabrics or blankets, using rulers and tape to eliminate traces of hand gestures—rigorously precise compositions formed through the

repetition of the cross.

Ding Yi’s methodical structures are animated by vibrant, reflexively chosen colours, introducing an element of chance and tension into the work. Through colour and form, his paintings reflect on China’s rapid industrialisation and urbanisation, with visual motifs echoing QR codes and the sensory intensity of an information-driven society. Since 2010, Ding Yi has adopted a more expansive perspective in his examination of the world, integrating reflections on the broader human condition. His more recent works reveal greater luminosity and intensity, carrying a deeper emotional resonance.

Ding Yi was born in Shanghai in 1962, where he continues to live and work. He studied Design at the Shanghai Art & Design Academy (1980–1983), and later traditional Chinese painting at Shanghai University’s Fine Arts Department (1986–1990). His recent solo exhibitions include those at Contemporary Gallery Kunming and Anthropology Museum of Yunnan University (2025); Mostyn, Llandudno, Wales (2025); Galerie Karsten Greve, Cologne (2024), Paris and St. Moritz (2025); Château La Coste, Provence (2024); Ningbo Museum of Art and Huamao Museum of Art Education (2023); MOCAUP, Shenzhen (2023); Mojie Art Museum, Taiyuan (2023); TAG Art Museum, Qingdao (2022); Jebumgang Art Center, Lhasa (2022); Galería RGR, Mexico City (2022); ShanghART Gallery, Shanghai (2018) and Singapore (2022); Timothy Taylor, New York (2021) and London (2019); Long Museum, Chongqing (2020) and West Bund, Shanghai (2015); Nova Contemporary, Bangkok (2020); Galerie Rüdiger Schöttle, Munich (2019); Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou (2018); Xi’an Art Museum (2017); and Hubei Museum of Art, Wuhan (2016).

Ding Yi has exhibited extensively in major international group exhibitions at institutions such as The British Museum, London; M+ Museum, Hong Kong; Power Station of Art and MOCA Shanghai; SFMOMA; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York and Bilbao; Mercedes-Benz Contemporary, Berlin; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg; MAXXI, Rome; UCCA, Beijing; and touring exhibitions in Bern, Hamburg, and Barcelona. He has also shown in biennales and triennales including the Venice Biennale (1993), Asia-Pacific Triennial (1993), Biennale of Sydney (1998), Yokohama Triennale (2001), Shanghai Biennale (2006), Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale (2012), and Busan Biennale (2016). 

LISSON GALLERY

67 Lisson Street, London

www.lissongallery.com

Ding Yi: The Road to Heaven

Lisson Gallery, London, 27 September – 1 November 2025

Line, Form, Qi: Calligraphic Art from the Fondation INK Collection @ LACMA, Los Angeles + Catalogue

Line, Form, Qi: Calligraphic Art from the Fondation INK Collection

LACMA, Los Angeles

Through October 19, 2025

Gu Gan 

Spring Rain, 2000 

Los Angeles County Museum of Art,

promised gift of the Fondation INK 

© Gu Gan Estate, photo by Maurice Aeschimann, Geneva,

courtesy of the Fondation INK

Joey Leung Ka-yin

Daisy Asks, 2012 

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 

promised gift of the Fondation INK 

© Joey Leung Ka-yin, photo by Maurice Aeschimann, Geneva, 

courtesy of the Fondation INK

Fung Ming Chip 

Buddhist Heort Sutra, ref 14, 2006 

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, promised gill of the Fondation INK 

© Fung Ming Chip, photo by Maurice Aeschimann, Geneva, 

courtesy of the Fondation INK

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) presents Line, Form, Qi: Calligraphic Art from the Fondation INK Collection. The exhibition examines experimental works by 34 modern and contemporary calligraphic artists including Fung Ming Chip, Gu Gan, Inoue Yūichi, Lee In, Henri Michaux, Nguyễn Quang Thắng, Qiu Zhijie, Tong Yang-Tze, Wang Dongling, Wei Ligang, and Xu Bing, among others. This is the second in a series of exhibitions of works from LACMA’s Fondation INK Collection, a 400-piece collection of contemporary art in the spirit of ink.

Regional groups of avant-garde modem and contemporary calligraphers have developed across East Asia from the mid-20th century to the present, many of whose works engage with or respond to Chinese characters. Spanning ink on paper, Works on canvas, wood board pieces, and ceramics, the exhibition illuminates how their practices have influenced and informed one another, as well as connections between East Asian calligraphy and Western abstract art. Line, Form, Qi is curated by Susanna Ferrell, Wynn Resorts Associate Curator of Chinese Art, and Wan Kong, The Mozhai Foundation Assistant Curator of Chinese Art, at LACMA.

"While East Asian calligraphy is anchored in tradition, it remains an extremely lively and experimental practice," said Susanna Ferrell. "I am thrilled to introduce to our visitors— many, for the first time—work by artists and art groups with limited exposure in the U.S., such as the Vietnamese Zenei Group of Five."

"As an art historian trained mostly in traditional Chinese art, I find it incredibly exciting to see how artists continue to reveal infinite possibilities for integrating deeply rooted traditions with contemporary concepts and materials," added Wan Kong.

"Line, Form, Qi makes critical connections between artistic practices from mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore, as weil as Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and France," said LACMA CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director Michael Govan. "With the unparalleled support of Fondation INK Collection founders, Gérard and Dora Cognié, LACMA is advancing its mission to reflect Los Angeles's diverse, interlocking cultures across our collection, exhibitions, and scholarship."

Une, Form, Qi presents more than 60 works across four thematic sections:

The evolution of Chinese characters from oracle bane inscriptions to standard script has been a process of abstraction: from painting pictorial images to writing standardized symbols. The exhibition's first section, Pictograph, spotlights experimentation with the interplay of writing and painting. Here, artists explore and deconstruct the origin of Chinese script. This includes Gu Gan's merging of Chinese tradition and Western abstraction in Spring Rain (2000), which simultaneously recalls and defies historical references. In Landscript (2022), Xu Bing situates written characters within his landscape to retether contemporary characters to the natural elements that once inspired their design.

Message probes relationships between content and form in Chinese writing. The artists featured in this section are conscious of bath the linguistic and visual expression of characters, and incorporate these dual aspects into their works. One of the earliest works included in the exhibition, A (1961), shows lnoue Yiiichi's return to single, inked characters on paper after years of breaking boundaries between abstract painting and calligraphy. Moving through ti me, Joey Leung Ka-yin's Daisy Asks (2012) contemporizes the gongbi (fineline) painting technique by instilling it with imagined narratives grounded in the daily life and culture of Hong Kong. Leung's Cantonese text merges satiricallanguage with classical poetic structure, reading like a single-panel comic strip with an inscription that mimies Fangsong, an imitation Song-dynasty typeface.

Calligraphers in East Asia have traditionally learned by referencing and copying specifie scripts established by their predecessors. Re-Form, however, explores how artists have come to create new forms of characters through persona!, cultural, and existential experiences. In Buddhist Heart Sutra, ref 16 (2006), Fung Ming Chip's calligraphy appears to be relatively standard, but on closer inspection, the center of each character is punctuated by slightly more saturated ink. Buddhist Heart Sutra, ref 14 (2006) juxtaposes the composition with white triangles surrounded by faint impressions of the same text.

ln the final section, Abstraction, artists distill components of calligraphie art, such as a single black ink brushstroke or the shape of a black of text. Departing from tradition, these calligraphy-inspired works must be experienced rather than read. Irene Chou cultivated a language of li nes in her abstract paintings, inspired by script found carved into a series of Sth-century boulders in north-central China. Her featured work, The Universe is My Mind, combines elements of her one-stroke painting technique with the shape of a circle-an evolution of a sphere motif that had previously emerged in her work as a symbol for love and her inner mind.

Line, Form, Qi: Calligraphic Art 

from the Fondation INK Collection

Published 2025 | ISBN: 9781636811581

Image courtesy of DelMonico Books

Publication: The exhibition's accompanying catalogue explores significant trends and innovations in contemporary calligraphic art, including abstraction of the character, performance and phenomenological practice, and experimentation with alternative or nontraditional materials and calligraphy methods such as incense burn drawing and lithography. This publication also addresses different through lines from premodern calligraphy to contemporary practice, reflecting the evolution of the Chinese language from pictograph to ideograph and beyond. Line, Form, Qi: Calligraphie Art from the Fondation INK Collection is edited with text by Susanna Ferrell and Wan Kong. Foreword by Michael Govan. Text by Rika Hiro, Stephen Little, Virginia Moon, and Li Wei Ng. Co-published by LACMA and Del Monica Books/D.A.P.

Line, Form, Qi was organized by the Los Angeles Counly Museum of Art and curated by Susanna Ferrell, Wynn Resorts Associate Curator of Chinese Art, and Wan Kong, The Mozhai Foundation Assistant Curator of Chinese Art, at LACMA.

LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art

5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA, 90036

www.lacma.org

Line, Form, Qi: Calligraphic Art from the Fondation INK Collection

LACMA, Los Angeles

April 6 - October 19, 2025

Realms of the Dharma: Buddhist Art Across Asia @ LACMA, Los Angeles

Realms of the Dharma: Buddhist Art Across Asia

LACMA, Los Angeles

May 11, 2025 – July 12, 2026 

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) presents Realms of the Dharma: Buddhist Art Across Asia. International in scope, this exhibition examines key concepts of Buddhist thought and practice through sculptures, paintings, textiles, and ritual objects. Incorporating 180 masterpieces of pan-Asian Buddhist art, Realms of the Dharma begins with the religion’s origins in India in the 5th century BCE and follows its spread through Southeast Asia, the Himalayas, and East Asia. Drawn from LACMA’s permanent collection, with several significant loans from private collections, the exhibition explores the life of the Buddha, the role of the bodhisattva or Buddhist savior, Buddhist cosmology, and such key concepts as dharma, karma, nirvana, mantra, mudra, and mandala. The show will focus on art associated with such key phases of Buddhism as Theravada (early monastic Buddhism), Mahayana (the “Great Vehicle”), Vajrayana (the “Diamond Vehicle”—tantric or esoteric Buddhism), and Chan (Zen).

“Realms of the Dharma presents an exciting opportunity for visitors to learn about the Buddhist religion, cosmology, and practice through works of art,” said Stephen Little, Florence & Harry Sloan Curator and Department Head of Chinese & Korean and South & Southeast Asian Art. “The exhibition explores the key concepts underlying this religion’s historical development and the reasons for its widespread popularity across Asia.”

Michael Govan, LACMA CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director said, "Following our recent exhibition Mapping the Infinite, which looked at cosmologies across cultures, Realms of the Dharma continues LACMA's commitment to presenting stories, perspectives, and ancestries that are deeply connected to the people of L.A. County. We've made that a cornerstone of the museum's approach to studying and sharing the collection with our vast public.” 

Realms of the Dharma: Buddhist Art Across Asia is divided into two sections. The first section tells the story of Buddhism’s birth and growth in and around the Indian subcontinent. The second section follows Buddhism as it travels beyond India to Sri Lanka, Myanmar [Burma], Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Kashmir, Nepal, Tibet, China, Korea, and Japan.

Realms of the Dharma: Buddhist Art Across Asia - Highlights

Buddha Shakyamuni 

India Uttar Pradesh, late 6th century 

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 

gift of the Michael J. Connell Foundation

Photo © Museum Associates/LACMA

From the late 6th century, the north Indian image of the historical Buddha Shakyamuni, with its serene countenance, embodies the style of the late Gupta dynasty (320–600), a balance of elegant form and inner spirituality. Although the Gupta rulers were Hindu, they actively patronized Buddhism. This Buddha embodies two ideals basic to Buddhism, the perfect yogi and the universal ruler. He possesses the yogi's supple body and contemplative gaze, and the ruler's strong shoulders, firm body, and webbed hands and feet. Time-honored traditions of portrayal connect the Buddha's human form with nature; his long eyes are shaped like fish, his curls like snail shells, and the profile of his left shoulder and arm like the trunk of an elephant. Following the invasion of northern India by Islamic rulers from Afghanistan in the 12th century, this sculpture was long preserved in a Tibetan monastery.

The Bodhisattva Maitreya 

India, Bihar, Gaya District, 11th century 

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 

from the Nasli and Alice Heeramaneck Collection, 

Museum Associates Purchase 

Photo © Museum Associates/LACMA

In Buddhism, Maitreya first appears as a bodhisattva—a fully enlightened being who was prophesied to become the Buddha of the next cosmic eon, or kalpa, after the end of the current universe. Until that time it is thought that Maitreya exists as a bodhisattva, but will eventually descend to earth from the heaven where he currently resides, undergo his final rebirth, and become a Buddha. In the 11th century schist The Bodhisattva Maitreya, the figure can be identified as Maitreya by the presence of a miniature stupa (reliquary) in his headdress. Maitreya's name means “The Benevolent One."

The Cosmic Buddha Vairochana 

China, c. 1600 

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 

gift of Richard and Ruth Dickes 

Photo © Museum Associates/LACMA

The Cosmic Buddha Vairochana is a rare painting from China of the primordial Buddha Vairochana, a central figure of the Five Cosmic Buddhas of the Mahayana and Vajrayana pantheons. The veneration of Vairochana first flourished in China during the Tang dynasty (618–906), and worship of this Cosmic Buddha soon spread to Korea and Japan. The historical Buddha Shakyamuni was believed to be a manifestation of Vairochana, who exists beyond time and space. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this work—in addition to its remarkable state of preservation—are the large numbers of smaller Buddhist and Daoist figures, among which are the guardians of the four cardinal directions and Dizang (Kshitigarbha or Earth Matrix), Bodhisattva of the Underworld.

The Buddhist Deities Chakrasamvara and Vajravarahi 

Tibet, c. 15th century 

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 

from the Nasli and Alice Heeramaneck Collection, 

Museum Associates Purchase

Photo © Museum Associates/LACMA

The vibrant The Buddhist Deities Chakrasamvara and Vajravarahi depicts the embrace of the deities Chakrasamvara and Vajravarahi, symbolizing the two essential elements of Buddhist belief and practice: compassion (male) and wisdom (female). Chakrasamvara is the central deity of the Chakrasamvara Tantra, a text composed in the late 8th or early 9th century in India, the main purpose of which is to provide a path to spiritual awakening and enlightenment through the meditation on the deity Heruka Chakrasamvara in union with Vajravarahi. The tantra outlines rituals, philosophies, and practices designed to cultivate enlightened states of mind by uniting the principles of bliss (right method) and emptiness (wisdom).

As part of the museum’s effort to share its permanent collection with audiences around the globe, a version of this exhibition was on view at the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City, in 2018, Las Huellas de Buda (The Footsteps of the Buddha). 

Realms of the Dharma: Buddhist Art Across Asia was organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

The exhibition is curated by Stephen Little, Florence & Harry Sloan Curator and Department Head of Chinese & Korean and South & Southeast Asian Art, and is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue with essays by Stephen Little and Tushara Bindu Gude, LACMA’s former Associate Curator of South and Southeast Asian Art.

Realms of the Dharma: Buddhist Art Across Asia

Edited with text by Stephen Little, Tushara Bindu Gude 

Foreword by Michael Govan

Published by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art / D.A.P.

Hardcover, 288 pages, 9 x 11 in., 254 color illustrations

ISBN: 9781942884781 -  Published 2025

LACMA - LOS ANGELES COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART 

5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA, 90036 

lacma.org

Lee Seung Jio @ Tina Kim Gallery, NYC - "Nucleus in Resonance" Exhibition of work by a leading figure in postwar Korean geometric abstraction

Lee Seung Jio: Nucleus in Resonance

Tina Kim Gallery, New York

September 18 - November 1, 2025

Tina Kim Gallery presents Lee Seung Jio: Nucleus in Resonance. Marking the gallery’s second solo exhibition of LEE SEUNG JIO (1941–1990), a leading figure in postwar Korean geometric abstraction, this presentation surveys Lee’s defining Nucleus series, which he explored consistently from the late 1960s to his final decade. For Lee, the nucleus was more than a formal motif; it functioned as a central point of perception, where energy, rhythm, and sensory experience came together.

 “I began this [painting] after the launch of the Apollo spacecraft opened my eyes to the spatiality of the universe. It feels like the most fitting way to express the era I live in, so I’ve kept working on it ever since.”[1]

During Korea’s rapid industrialization and urban expansion in the 1960s, Lee turned to a single, enduring motif: the cylindrical pipe form. Lee’s pipes are both abstract and figurative, existing as two-dimensional planes and three-dimensional forms. Although often referred to as the “master of pipes,” Lee once noted that he neither sought nor rejected the label. For him, the repeated cylindrical form was never intended to represent any symbolic object; rather, it served to expose the illusions inherent in visual perception and to question the premise of figurative representation. Through this process, Lee aimed to depict a sensuous realm stripped of symbolic meaning—a world of “sheer particles,” as he described it.

As a founding member of the groups ORIGIN (1962–) and AG (Korean Avant-Garde Association, 1969–1975), Lee helped establish the theoretical and methodological foundations of postwar Korean art. Even though his work was often associated with movements such as Mono-ha, Minimalism, and Dansaekhwa at the time, Lee developed a distinct visual language characterized by precision, restraint, and structural clarity. As Joan Kee has observed, Lee’s work reveals how he critically engaged with contemporary abstraction—a mode in which socio-historical conditions are transformed into rigorous compositional structures.[2]

The earliest work in the exhibition, Nucleus 10 (1968), was first shown at the 12th Contemporary Art Exhibit at Gyeongbokgung Palace Museum. The painting marks the beginning of Lee’s signature motif—a tubular form. This vocabulary finds fuller articulation in Nucleus 74-9 (1968–1974), in which the pipe motif becomes the organizing framework of the entire composition. To achieve the illusion of metallic density, Lee applied oil paint with a flat brush loaded with light and dark tones at either end, then meticulously sanded the surface—burnishing the paint to heighten its reflectivity and optical depth. Featured in Only the Young: Experimental Art in Korea, 1960s–1970s—co-organized by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea and the Guggenheim Museum—the work affirms Lee’s growing significance within Korean modernism.

Lee continued to experiment with iterations of the Nucleus and develop his formal vocabulary throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Nucleus 73-18 (1973) and Nucleus 74-07 (1974) demonstrate his continued inquiry into the nature of perception, while reflecting a more subtle visual language grounded in the distilled and process-driven aesthetics of the time. Works from the 1980s—represented here by Nucleus 88-10 (1988), Nucleus 86-71 (1986), and the monumental Nucleus 87-99 (1987)—demonstrate his sustained pursuit of structural rigor, while simultaneously drawing the viewer into contemplative, illusionistic spaces that transcend the material surface of the canvas.

The exhibition concludes with the first U.S. presentation of Lee’s black paintings, including Nucleus 78-23, 78-24, 78-25 and 78-26 (all 1978). For Lee, black was not merely a color but a fundamental space of silence, stillness, and emptiness—where all elements were reduced to their origin. In Lee’s vocabulary, the nucleus signified not only the structural core of the image but a condensed field of visual and sensory perception. These works represent the culmination of his decades-long exploration of abstraction, characterized by their emphasis on materiality and process. Lee’s black paintings draw the viewer into a contemplative space where being and form quietly converge, embodying his pursuit of abstraction’s essential condition. 

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[1] Lee Seung Jio, “Presenting the Nucleus Series with Cold Lines and Blazes of Fire,” interview with Maeil Business Newspaper, October 24, 1984.

[2] Joan Kee, “Force Fields,” in Lee Seung Jio: Advancing Columns (Seoul: National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, 2020), 14-25.

TINA KIM GALLERY

525 West 21st Street, New York, NY 10011

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Korean Landscapes of Homeland and Longing - A Commemorative Exhibition for the 80th Anniversary of Korea's Liberation @ MMCA Deoksugung, Seoul

A Commemorative Exhibition for the 80th Anniversary of Korea's Liberation 

Landscapes of Homeland and Longing 

MMCA Deoksugung, Seoul

14 August – 9 November 2025

Chun Hyucklim 

Landscape of Tongyeong, 1992

Oil paint on canvas, 130×160cm

Tongyeong City Hall

Nam Kwan 

Refugees, 1957 

Oil paint on canvas, 160.5×130.5cm 

Private collection

Kim Junghyun 

Landscape, 1940s

Ink and color on paper, 168×94cm (×2) 

Bookook Cultural Foundation

The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA), presents A Commemorative Exhibition for the 80th Anniversary of Liberation: Landscapes of Homeland and Longing at MMCA Deoksugung.

Through modern and contemporary Korean landscape paintings, poetry, and Manchurian exile Gasa poetry, this exhibition explores the sentiment of “hometown” that has remained deeply rooted in Korean consciousness throughout the turbulent tides of Japanese colonial rule and liberation, division and war, and the subsequent waves of industrialization and urbanization.

In reflecting on the 80-year history since liberation, the concept of 'hometown' serves as a key link between this land and its people. In Korean literature and art, the “hometown” is depicted as homeland, motherland, paradise, or an object of eternal yearning. During the Japanese colonial period it symbolized a nation lost, it became the land of nostalgia after national division, and it transformed into a fading landscape during the era of industrialization. Nostalgia for home has been an enduring emotional thread running through the country’s turbulent modern history, serving as a source of inspiration in both modern and contemporary art and literature.

The exhibition is centered around four themes: homeland, affection for home, displacement from home, and longing for home. It presents an opportunity to reflect on the meaning of Korean land through modern and contemporary landscape paintings that portray the loss and rediscovery of territory during the Japanese colonial period, the separation and dispersal caused by division and war, survival amid ruins, and the hope of reconstruction. In particular, this exhibition sheds light on the diverse layers of modern and contemporary art by uncovering and showcasing works that have long been kept in museum storage, private collections, or the homes of artists' families—such as regional landscapes and pieces by local artists that have rarely been seen in the mainstream art world.

Lee Insung 

Untitled, 1930s-1940s 

Ink and color on paper, 47×36cm 

Private collection

Part 1, “Homeland: The Stolen Fields,” examines perspectives of Korean land in the imperialist era through landscape paintings that depict the country’s various regions during the Japanese colonial period. During this period, the concept of homeland was shaped by Japan’s colonial perspective, which portrayed Joseon as an idyllic and pure countryside using the style of “local color” paintings. These works were simultaneously in vogue and at the center of controversy. Other artists, however, such as Oh Chiho and Kim Jukyung of the Nokhyanghoe (Green Hometown Association) in Gyeongseong, endeavored to express the true nature of Joseon through rich variations of light and color by recognizing “hometown” as a space that inspires national sentiment and seeking to discover the unique colors inherent in the Korean land. In addition, landscape paintings by artists from regional groups such as Hyangtohoe in Daegu, Chungwanghoe in Busan, Yeonjinhoe in Gwangju, and the art communities of Jeju and Honam region reflect the distinct climates and sceneries of their respective areas. This section presents works that reflect the complex perspectives surrounding Korean land during the Japanese colonial period, alongside powerful verses by resistance poet Yi Sang-hwa; nostalgic poems by other Korean poets including Jeong Ji-yong, Baek Seok, Lee Yong-ak, and Oh Jang-hwan; and Manchurian exile Gasa poetry written by independence activists in Manchuria, which have been inscribed in UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register. By presenting these materials alongside artworks, the exhibition seeks to explore shared expressions of the sense of 'hometown' embedded in the cultural and artistic consciousness of the time.

Heo Geon 

Cultural Landscape, 1945 

Ink and color on paper, 56×48cm

Private collection

Lee Sangbeom 

Returning at Dawn, 1945 

Ink on paper, 129×256cm 

Private collection

Yoo Youngkuk 

Mountain, 1984 

Oil paint on canvas, 97.5×130cm

MMCA Lee Kun-hee Collection

Part 2, “Affection for Home: A Land Reclaimed,” explores how hometown emerged as a significant motif in the works of artists following Korea’s liberation. These pieces reflect experimentation aimed at conveying the vivid spirit of the country’s climate, terrain, and natural environment, along with efforts to incorporate traditional materials, colors, and aesthetic sensibilities. Featured artists include Son Ilbong, who returned to his hometown of Gyeongju after teaching in Japan and created numerous landscape paintings; Moon Shin, who returned to Korea immediately after liberation from studying in Japan and captured the vibrant energy of the sea off the coast of his native Masan; Lee Ungno, an artist known for his innovative approach to modern ink painting who explored diverse formal expressions in ink to capture the landscapes of his hometown Hongseong and its surrounding regions during the pre- and post-liberation periods; Kim Whanki, who forged a uniquely Korean modernism, inspired by the blue islands, skies, and moonlit seas of his native Anjwado Island in Sinan; and Yoo Youngkuk , who developed a uniquely Korean mode of abstraction through his persistent exploration of the mountainous forms of his hometown Uljin. Chun Hyucklim, who discovered a unique artistic language in the landscapes of his hometown Tongyeong, and Byun Shiji, who found his artistic identity in his native Jeju. These artist’ works highlight how hometown served as a powerful artistic inspiration. In this section, in particular, highlights how the artistic roots of well-known painters such as Kim Whanki, Yoo Youngkuk, and Lee Ungno can be traced back to their hometowns, offering insight into a crucial turning point in the transition from modern to contemporary art in Korea.

Kim Won 

Title unknown, 1954

Oil paint on canvas, 102×177.7cm 

MMCA

Byeon Gwansik 

Spring in Muchang, 1955

Ink and color on paper, 181×357cm 

MMCA Lee Kun-hee Collection

Shin Youngheon 

Suffering, year unknown

Oil paint on canvas, 35×25cm 

Private collection

Part 3, “Displaced from Home: A Land Ruined,” examines depictions of Korean land as perceived and recorded by artists amidst the nation-wide tragedy of the Korean War. The City After the War (1950) by Lee Chongmoo and Demonlished (1953) by To Sangbong portray devastated urban landscapes with a sense of desolation and quiet melancholy. Abstract and semi-abstract landscapes such as Shin Youngheon’s Tragedy (1958), Lee Soo-auck’s 6.25 War (1954), and Nam Kwan’s Refugees (1957) express the horrors of war and the memory of suffering through dark colors, rough brushstrokes, and a fragmentation and deconstruction of form. Meanwhile, Lee Manik’s Cheonggyecheon (1964) and Chun Huahuan’s The Left Behind By War, (1964), painted from a realist perspective, vividly and intensely depict the bleak reality of the era, portraying the poverty and despair of refugee settlements during the war. Artists of this period reflected on their wartime experiences to confront trauma and terror while seeking to transform and overcome them through artistic creation. Rather than depicting tragedy directly, the expression reveals the inner emotions of people reflected in the landscapes, allowing viewers to interpret these historical landscape paintings from multiple perspectives.

Yoon Jungsik

Spring, 1975

Oil paint on canvas, 41×53cm

MMCA

Choi Youngrim

Spring Garden, 1982 

Oil paint and soil on canvas, 127×191cm

Seoul Museum

Kim Jonghwi

Hometown Nostalgia, 1987

Oil paint on canvas, 97×194.5cm 

MMCA

Part 4, “Longing for Home: A Land of Nostalgia,” features works by artists who explored their own artistic worlds grounded in longing and the pain of displacement and separation due to war and the ensuing national division. These artists included motifs in their work that evoke the lyrical sentiment of their native regions and depicted their hometowns as ideal paradises to soothe their yearning. Works such as Yoon Jungsik’s Spring (1975), Park Sungwhan’s Nostalgia (1971), and Choi Youngrim’s Spring Garden (1982), which present utopian visions of hometowns in the face of losing both family and hometown while enduring loneliness, isolation, poverty, and sorrow, pose a fundamental question: what does art leave behind and what purpose did it serve in an era of such loss and deprivation? During this period, artists who shared the experience of displacement came together to organize the 1952 Wolnam Artists’ Exhibition, followed by the founding of the Creative Art Association in 1957 and the Exhibition of Gusangjeon in 1967, through which they sought to explore a shared artistic direction grounded in the sentiment of longing.

Kim Sunghee, director of the MMCA, notes, “This exhibition commemorates the 80th anniversary of Korea’s liberation by retracing the emotional resonance of hometown that has remained in our hearts throughout the country’s modernization, industrialization, and urbanization, as expressed through landscape painting. I hope it offers visitors a sincere experience of the perspectives held by these artists who captured the spirit of their times and their homeland.”

MMCA Deoksugung - National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art

99 Sejong-daero (Jeong-dong), Jung-gu, Seoul 04519

www.mmca.go.kr

The Way of Nature: Art from Japan, China, and Korea @ Baltimore Museum of Art

The Way of Nature

Art from Japan, China, and Korea

Baltimore Museum of Art

September 21, 2025 - March 8, 2026

The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) presents The Way of Nature: Art from Japan, China, and Korea, which draws on the museum’s extensive holdings to consider the importance of nature in East Asian cultures. The exhibition features more than 40 objects, from magnificent ink drawings to beautifully crafted stoneware and poignant contemporary photographs and prints. Collectively, the works reflect on nature as a vital source of creative inspiration and spiritual connection and consider human existence within the complexity of the vast natural world across centuries and into the present day. The Way of Nature: Art from Japan, China, and Korea is part of the BMA’s Turn Again to the Earth initiative, which explores the relationships between art and the environment.

“The Way of Nature offers an insightful look at the intertwining roots of artistic expression and the experience of the natural world through vibrant works from the BMA’s Asian art collection. It’s an exciting opportunity to see objects on view for the first time, or in a long time, through a lens that is both accessible and meaningful, as many of us seek connection through and to nature,” said Asma Naeem, the BMA’s Dorothy Wagner Wallis Director. “As the BMA focuses on expanding its collection with the work of artists from around the globe, we are excited to continue to share more of our holdings, and the stories they contain, with our community.”

The Way of Nature is organized around four overarching themes that engage with elemental aspects of the natural world and human intervention within it. The exhibition opens with a section that examines depictions, interpretations, and connections to the qualities of air, water, and stone. Among the highlights is a handmade Fireman's Coat (hikeshi banten) with Hawk and Waves (Japan, early- to mid-20th century) by an unidentified artist. The intricately sewn object depicts a hawk soaring above turbulent waves, suggesting that the firefighter who chose the design sought the protective powers of water, strength, and keen vision. During a fire, the beautiful imagery would have been worn on the interior, only to be revealed once the fire was extinguished. The section also includes works such as the evocative ink drawing Water and Mountain Landscape (China, 1955) by the artist Huang Junbi and the densely decorated wood and jade sculpture Miniature Mountain with Longevity Motifs (China, late 18th - early 19th century) by an unidentified artist. 

The second section explores the significance of the changing seasons as visual indicators of nature’s transformative power, whether in the experience of wild terrain or in meticulously tended gardens. Across East Asia, emblems of the seasons, such as plums for the spring and chrysanthemums for the fall, are both often shared within communities and widely referenced in art. A case in this section includes a range of objects featuring plum blossoms, such as the hanging scroll Plum Branch and Full Moon (Japan, 1905-1915) by Kamisaka Sekka and the stoneware Bowl Decorated with Plum Branch and Crescent Moon (China, 13th century) by an unidentified artist. The section also includes a stunning Buddhist Priest's Robe (Kesa) in Karaori with Floral Designs (Japan, 1750-1868) by an unidentified artist.

The Way of Nature continues with works that capture human intrusion into the natural realm, as artists reveal humanity’s environmental impact through both imagery of calamitous events and in more subtle and ambiguous scenes. In his series Between Mountains and Water (2014–2017), Chinese artist Zhang Kechun examined the effects of human activities on the landscape in Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, while Japanese artist Leiko Shiga documented the aftermath of Japan’s 2011 earthquake and tsunami in the poignant photo series Rasen Kaigan. The exhibition concludes with consideration of the spiritual transcendence that can be found in nature. This final section is anchored by the eight-panel screen Ten Symbols of Long Life (Korea, mid- to late 19th century) by an unidentified artist. The complex screen incorporates eight separate paintings to convey a wish for longevity, as embodied through such symbols as cranes, bamboo, water, and sun.

The Way of Nature: Art from Japan, China, and Korea is curated by Frances Klapthor, BMA Associate Curator of Asian Art.

BMA - BALTIMORE ART MUSEUM 

10 Art Museum Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218

artbma.org

Ceci N’est Pas Une Guerre - This Is Not A War - Exhibition Curated by Do Tuong Linh Eli @ Klein Gallery, New York

Ceci N’est Pas Une Guerre - This Is Not A War

Curated by Do Tuong Linh

Eli Klein Gallery, New York

Through August 23, 2025

Bui Cong Khanh

Porcelain Medals, 2018

140 hand painted porcelain medals

Courtesy of Eli Klein Gallery

© Bui Cong Khanh

Ca Le Thang

Beneath Deep Rivers, Field Submerged No. 3, 2024

Oil, acrylic, and mixed media on canvas

39 3/8 x 67 inches  (100 x 170 cm)

Courtesy of the artist, Salon Wiking, and Eli Klein Gallery 

© Ca Le Thang

Nguyen Phuong Linh

Allergy, 2004

6kg of nails on underwears

Courtesy of Eli Klein Gallery

© Nguyen Phuong Linh

Eli Klein Gallery presents “Ceci N’est Pas Une Guerre - This Is Not A War,” a group exhibition of 17 Vietnamese artists showcasing 24 works. Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, the exhibition seeks to challenge the long-standing tendency to confine Vietnamese contemporary art within narrow narratives of war, trauma, and survival. Audiences are invited to move beyond inherited narratives and experience the breadth, complexity, and vitality of Vietnamese contemporary art today: unbound, unpredictable, and charged with energy.

Artists: Bui Cong Khanh, Bui Thanh Tam, Ca Le Thang, Doan Van Toi, My-Lan Hoang-Thuy, Le Hoang Bich Phuong, Oanh Phi Phi, Nguyen Phuong Linh, Anh Thuy Nguyen, Xuân-Lam Nguyen, Ha Ninh Pham, Pham Tuan Tu, Arlette Quynh-Anh Tran, Tran Luong, Truong Tan, Van Khanh, Minh Dung Vu

The exhibition prompts a reconsideration of how Vietnamese visual culture is presented within a global context. While artists have engaged deeply with the past fifty years of history after the War, their works have often been interpreted through the lens of the aftermath. Within the context of Vietnam's massive economic reforms, the artists critically explore themes of identity, censorship, and queerness. The exhibition focuses on a younger generation of artists who reflect on materiality, memory, and mythology, reimagining self and culture beyond the burden of historical trauma. The exhibition also highlights Vietnamese artists living abroad, particularly in America, France and Germany, whose works address themes of displacement, cultural hybridity, and artistic innovation. Curated by Do Tuong Linh, the show brings together the voices that challenge the notion of “Vietnamese art” as a singular concept, creating a layered dialogue that is poetic and political, introspective and globally engaged.

Emerging in the aftermath of the Vietnam War and the implementation of the widespread generation of influential artists responded to history, memory, and the shifting boundaries of identity and expression in deeply personal and resonant ways. Ca Le Thang’s compositionally poetic painting serves as a quiet footnote to the natural and spiritual landscapes of southern Vietnam, expressing a deep emotional connection to his homeland’s nature and history. Through humor and symbolism, Tran Luong retells a traditional Vietnamese legend in a gently narrated yet subtly subversive manner, reflecting the sociopolitical tensions and transformations of early 21st-century Vietnam.

Truong Tan, who was considered the first openly gay artist from Vietnam, creates work that is both emblematic and groundbreaking in its exploration of social norms and marginalized identities. Blending historical research with conceptual art not taught in Vietnam’s educational system, Bui Cong Khanh playfully, yet critically, challenges official reward systems by combining porcelain military insignias from multiple nations to question the authority behind medals. Vietnamese lacquer serves as the core medium in Oanh Phi Phi’s practice, through which she explores the transmission of memory, reflections on image theory, and experimental possibilities in scale and technique. Bui Thanh Tam blends the delicate spirit of Vietnamese folk traditions with the bold allure of pop and consumer culture, creating works that are at once challenging, seductive, and provocative.

Building on this historical trajectory, a younger cohort turned toward material experimentation, ironic language, and cross-disciplinary methods to address contemporary social issues, incisively engaging with gender, politics, and cultural memory amid Vietnam’s rapid transformation. Pham Tuan Tu combines elements of primitivism and humor in his work, using refined craftsmanship and a diverse range of materials to delve into the complexities of contemporary society. Nguyen Phuong Linh weaves personal memories into broader cultural contexts, skillfully transforming found objects and materials to reveal the vulnerability of being a woman in Vietnamese society.

Merging political themes with sci-fi aesthetics, Arlette Quynh-Anh Tran constructs nonlinear and absurd narratives of modern history, challenging dominant post–Cold War frameworks surrounding the Global South. Doan Van Toi and Le Hoang Bich Phuong both explore the contemporary rhythms of traditional media. Toi weaves digital pixels into silk and textiles to reflect on the intricate relationship between humans and nature, while Phuong employs delicate silk to blend surrealism with quiet subversion, questioning gender, eccentricity, and societal norms.

Artistic practice continues to expand into the intersections of new media, speculative narratives, and digital processes, reimagining and reconstructing tradition and identity. Vietnamese art now charts a future-oriented sensibility, forging new dialogues and connections between personal experience and global context. My-Lan Hoang-Thuy redefines the relationship between artist and medium, using acrylic drips as a “canvas” to merge painting with personal photography, creating a visual language where intimacy, spontaneity, and imagination intersect. Ha Ninh Pham explores the construction of territories and perception through drawing and sculpture, creating imagined worlds shaped by his unique logic and underlying sense of skepticism. By sewing dyed silk onto canvas, Minh Dung Vu initiates a dialogue between material surface and visual texture, investigating materiality, light, shadow, and perception.

Xuân-Lam Nguyen brings forgotten Vietnamese folk art into contemporary relevance, focusing on Indochinese Orientalist photography and displaced cultural artifacts, blending autobiographical elements with queer identity to construct glitchy, alternative narratives that offer a dynamic commentary on the intersections of identity and history. Anh Thuy Nguyen’s sculptural works explore the relationship between emotional states and the human body. Through digitizing and transforming everyday Vietnamese domestic objects, Van Khanh creates faux-fiber replicas that exist between physical reality and digital dreamscape, reimagining traditions and mythologies within trans narratives.

About the Curator Do Tuong Linh 

Do Tuong Linh is a curator based in Hanoi (Vietnam) and New York City (United States). Linh holds a BA in Art History and theoretical criticism from Vietnam University of Fine Arts, and a MA in Contemporary Art and Art Theory of Asia and Africa, at SOAS (University of London) UK with the prestigious Alphawood scholarship. She is a part of Bard Curatorial Studies program class of 2025 and was part of the curatorial team of 12th Berlin Biennial.

Linh has engaged in various art exhibitions and projects in Southeast Asia, Europe and beyond since 2005. She participated in international arts programs such as Le 18 Curator In Residency 2024, Asia Cultural Council Research Fellowship 2023, Ljubljana Graphic Art Biennial 2019, Slovenia; Association of Art Museum Curators conference, New York, USA; Mekong Cultural Hub 2018 – 2019, Taiwan; CIMAM International Museum Workshop 2018, Oslo, Norway; Asia Culture Center (Gwangju, Korea) 2018; Tate Intensive 2018, Tate Modern Museum, UK; French Encounter at Art Basel in Hong Kong 2018. Some of her notable curated exhibitions include Who is Weaving the Sky Net (Singapore), Means of Production 2024 (New York City, USA), Revived Photo Hanoi 2023 (Hanoi, Vietnam), Berlin Biennial 2022 (Berlin, Germany), Citizen Earth 2020 (Hanoi, Vietnam), The Foliage 3 (VCCA, Vincom Center for Contemporary Arts, Hanoi, Vietnam) 2019, Geo-Resilience of the All-world at La Colonie (Paris, France) 2018, the No War, No Vietnam exhibition at Galerie Nord (Berlin, Germany) 2018, and SEAcurrents (London, UK) 2017.

ELI KLEIN GALLERY

398 West Street, New York, NY 10014

www.galleryek.com

Ceci N’est Pas Une Guerre - This Is Not A War

Eli Klein Gallery, New York, May 23 - August 23, 2025

Zhao Yinou @ HdM Gallery, Beijing - "Ghost Raising" Exhibition

Zhao Yinou: Ghost Raising

HdM Gallery, Beijing

Through 28 June 2025

ZHAO YINOU

2024-25.3, 150 × 220 cm, 2024-2025

© Zhao Yinou, courtesy HdM Gallery

ZHAO YINOU

2025.4, 150 × 220 cm, 2025 

© Zhao Yinou, courtesy HdM Gallery

ZHAO YINOU

2025.10, 50 × 35 cm, 2025

© Zhao Yinou, courtesy HdM Gallery

ZHAO YINOU

2020-25.14, 150 × 220 cm, 2020-2025

© Zhao Yinou, courtesy HdM Gallery

HdM Gallery presents “Ghost Raising”, the latest solo exhibition of Zhao Yinou. This is Zhao Yinou’s third solo exhibition at HdM Gallery after “On the Wings of A Swan” in 2022. The exhibition features over 30 works on canvas and wood, alongside the artist’s first experimental integration of sound installations within painting. Zhao’s recent practice delves into meditations on eternity, transforming diffuse collective memories of our era-viewed through the microscopic lens of individual experience-into layered spatiotemporal structures. 

Light

Light is the universe’s primal language—formless yet shaping all visible forms. In Zhao Yinou’s oeuvre, light manifests itself as a spiritual presence: the sacred light, the arbitrary light, the stalemate light, and the repressed light appear repeatedly in different densities and in different stages of her creation, forming multiple echoes between the artist her spatiotemporal self. In her new artworks, light appears in every infinite texture and space radiated by herself, becoming a link connecting countless parallel spaces: on ice, sea, trees, mountains, and grasslands, resembles a fleeting blink of cosmic radiance.

 

Dust

The traces after "burning" are not only the suspension of material particles in the layers of paint, but also the poetic interval between the artist's memory and the present. Zhao Yinou's creation does not rely on linear narrative. She restrains and selects emotions and memories in a cross-dimensional perspective. Time is distorted into any frame that can be extracted in the physical dimension, and transformed into repeated brushstrokes and spray-painted textures on the canvas. Layered surfaces do not merely obscure but capture emotional variables through accumulated dust, extrapolating potential parallel worlds. The delayed emotional catharsis and stratified “dust” forge an intangible distance between artwork and viewer, immersing audiences in a heterogeneous field of overlapping time and space—a realm both visual and psychic.

 

Breath

The sound installation incorporated into this exhibition leads the audience into the artist's sealed field with a flowing energy that can be perceived in multiple dimensions. The low hum on the back of each artwork once again forms a kind of unspeakable "interval" with the audience. The "breath" of hearing drives the "breath" of vision. Between one breath and another, time is like a lie, the future collapses into the past, and the past flows towards the end.

 

Reignition

The brevity inherent in the  existence of human beings in the universe is heavy and depressing; in this unburned box, Zhao Yinou uses almost always monochrome paint to visualize abstract emotions into an existence that jumps out of time and space, in the rational laws of physics, she uses a silent declaration to outline a love letter, which is eternally entangled in the vast smoke.

 

ZHAO YINOU was born in 1972 and currently lives and works in Paris. She was  the producer of documentaries “À l'ouest des rails” and “He Fengming”. Recent group and solo exhibitions include: “Being of Evils”, Hive Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China (2020); “Psychicalreality”, Space Station, Beijing, China (2019); “Prisonnier”, Vanities, Paris, French (2019); “HAPPY PEOPLE......”, Inside-out Art Museum, Beijing, China (2019); “HER KIND•CHUANG”, Zhuzhong Art Museum, Beijing, China (2018); “The Pleasures of Adventures”, N3 gallery, Beijing, China (2016); “OPEN TO YOU”, Pusan, Korea (2014) and etc. 

HdM GALLERY

798 East Road, 798 Art District, No.2 Jiuxianqiao Road, Chaoyang District, 100015 Beijing

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Zhao Yinou: Ghost Raising

HdM Gallery, Beijing, 17 May - 28 June 2025