Kukje Gallery is pleased to announce its exhibition schedule for 2024. The gallery’s program will commence with a solo exhibition dedicated to the Korean contemporary artist Gimhongsok from February 1, 2024. Titled Normal order aimed at failure, the exhibition will span both K1 and K2, featuring sculptures, paintings, and installations that challenge binary concepts prevalent in contemporary society. Conceived in pairs, the artist’s sculptures deftly use the language of humor to parody modernism—the foundation of binarism—as well as modernist aesthetic that has persisted throughout history, even after the days of postmodernism that had resisted against modernism. Gimhongsok's hyperrealist sculptures in bronze or resin depicting a range of subjects, including a cat, a hand, shoes, and meteorites, explore the theme of hybridity and blur the boundaries of the real and the unreal, the normal and the abnormal. In the artist’s variation on Four Gracious Plants (Sagunja), the dense volume and texture of acrylic paint and modeling paste foreground the traditional scent of ink, replacing the spirit and attitude of ‘Gunja’—or the Oriental ideal of a virtuous gentleman—with the concept of Western modernism. As a result, the painting offers a portrait of a contemporary Asian subject plagued by schizophrenic materiality. Keenly aware of the ongoing impact of Western modernity after the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the unorthodox sense of identity unwillingly inherited by those across the world, Gimhongsok probes his own position within the vexed history and materializes this into his work. As such, the exhibition invites the viewer into the artist’s world that shuns binarism while contemplating the possibility of entangled relationships.

In March, the gallery’s Busan outpost will present Kim Yong-Ik’s first solo exhibition in the region, which will also mark the artist’s first show with the gallery in six years. On December 31, 2018, Kim embarked on a new series titled Exhausting Project, in which he proposed to exhaust all the art supplies in his studio, including paint and color pencils. In this process, Kim sectioned his canvases into small shapes to evenly accommodate all the different colors of paint, resulting in geometric compositions that align with the ‘low entropy’ lifestyle he has always pursued as an artist. Kim’s work also borrows symbolism from the ancient Chinese I Ching (Classic of Changes), offering an alternative technique called for in these turbulent times. The upcoming exhibition will provide a space to engage with Kim’s new works and meditate on the coming era, framed in relation to his past works.

Also in March, Suki Seokyeong Kang and Kim Yun Shin will each mount solo exhibitions in the Seoul galleries. Suki Seokyeong Kang is known for portraying the minimal piece of land upon which today’s individual can stand and root down, defining and expanding her notion of the “grid.” Titled March, Kang’s first exhibition at Kukje Gallery will be installed in K3, tied to the advent of spring as the artist further takes a step forward to nourishing her own “plot of land.” While paintings constructed out of colored wool and silk adorn the walls of the gallery, Kang’s new sculptures casted in bronze will be presented across the floor and the ceiling. Mobiles will be suspended from the ceiling, while the artist’s other sculptures (on the floor) will be designed to stand upright even when pushed over, like roly-poly toys. Currently the subject of a large solo exhibition at Leeum Museum of Art, Kang will showcase her expanding artistic vocabulary in diverse media through her upcoming show at the gallery.

Meanwhile in the K1 and K2 galleries, Kim Yun Shin will present her inaugural exhibition with the gallery. Kim, who moved to Argentina in the mid-1980s and has been based in Latin America for almost four decades, will have her first exhibition since moving back to Korea. With her mid-career move to Latin America, Kim was able to dislocate herself from the main modernist movements in the Korean art scene and cultivate a uniquely personal visual grammar. Delving into an intense study of materials, primarily wood, Kim’s practice demonstrates respect towards her chosen medium, as can be seen from how she titles her work: Add Two Add One, Divide Two Divide One. As per this comprehensive title, the wood and the artist are not the object and subject of contemplation, but rather function together as one. The exhibition will showcase paintings and sculptures produced to be complementary, creating a compelling dialogue showcasing the significant turning points of the artist’s prolific career thus far.

In May, the gallery’s K2 space in Seoul will present a solo exhibition by the German photographer Candida Höfer. Marking her first solo presentation in four years, since her 2020 show in Busan, the upcoming show also celebrates the artist’s 80th birthday. Over the past five decades, Höfer has photographed the interiors of culturally significant public spaces around the world including libraries, museums, and concert halls with her signature precision in compositional arrangement and detail. Capturing sites defined by the absence of inhabitants, her images offer an unusual viewpoint that contemplates the rich social and historical implications of cultural institutions. Featuring new works created by visiting historic buildings that were under renovation during the pandemic, as well as revisiting sites from her previous portfolio, the exhibition aims to share Höfer’s unique approach and reflect on the recent adversities faced by all humanity, offering a sense of recovery and renewal. Höfer has recently been selected as the recipient of the prestigious ‘2024 Käthe Kollwitz Prize’ hosted by the Berlin Academy of Arts.

In late May, Seoul’s K1 and K3 spaces will feature SUPERFLEX. The solo exhibition starts from the video work Flooded McDonald’s (2009), which frames the group’s concern about climate change. The video documents the submersion of a life-size replica of a fast-food restaurant. As the store is gradually submerged, its various components including furniture and cups become the protagonists of this post-apocalyptic vignette. In addition to the pathos elicited by this mundane but powerful drama relating to the threat of climate change, SUPERFLEX will show new paintings and sculptures in the context of the future to be faced by humanity. These will include sculptures that can function as housing for fish once the planet is completely underwater due to the rising of sea levels, and paintings that visualize our fixation on capital even within a crumbling world.

Also in May, Na Kim’s solo exhibition will welcome visitors at the gallery’s Busan space. As the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, the presentation will include recent works that probe the expressive potentials and utilities of the formal elements of graphic design. Drawing from her background in graphic design, Kim has created a nuanced practice by working between different genres and mediums of visual art. Her latest work investigates how the combination of visual language encountered in daily life and different types of support—encompassing materials such as canvas, textile, acryl, and gypsum—can transform one’s sense of perception and experience. Through her SET and Piece series, Kim illuminates the close alignment between her ongoing design-oriented experiments and the history of painting, which questions the relationship between the subject and the background, and further challenges the boundaries of two- and three-dimensions. In her Object series, the artist reinterprets found objects taken out of their original contexts by imbuing them with a fictional narrative.

In August, Michael Joo will debut all-new sculptures and multi-media artworks that bring together the tangible and the ethereal. Installing work across the gallery’s Seoul and Busan spaces, the artist will merge fantastical crystalline forms made in liminal digital space with carefully hand-hewn objects, continuing his interest in the fragility and resilience of the natural world and human liminality. Referencing both Joo’s early explorations of intimacy, contextual frameworks, and natural design, as well as his most recent forays into blockchain and AI, this new body of works presents a convergence of digital innovation and organic beauty.

In September in Seoul, the gallery will showcase a solo exhibition by Kyungah Ham, an artist best known for exploring the impact of social and political dynamics on individuals within the context of contemporary art. While the artist works across painting, installation, video, and performance, Ham is most well-known for her SMS and What you see is the unseen / Chandeliers for Five Cities series, both of which belong to her embroidery project. Characterized by a vivacious splash of color, meticulously crafted surfaces, and visually stunning complexity, these embroidered paintings, in essence, highlight the dynamics between the conspicuous and the inconspicuous elements that come into play in forming a single image. For her upcoming show, the artist will present a series of new works that continue to weave the wefts and warps of the visible and the invisible. Following her exhibition at Kukje Gallery in 2015, Ham has exhibited internationally, including the Kunstmuseum Bern, Switzerland; ARTHENA FOUNDATION, Düsseldorf, Germany; Seoul Museum of Art, Korea; Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile (CHAT), Hong Kong; and participated in the inaugural edition of the New York Asia Society Triennial in 2020.

In November, Kukje Gallery will present a solo exhibition of Bill Viola, centered around one of his most significant works, Moving Stillness: Mount Rainier 1979 (1979). This powerful installation depicts a large body of water above which a rear projection screen is suspended—the condition of which leads the projected image of Mount Rainier to be dependent on the state of the water’s surface. Any small disruption of the water directly impacts the image and therefore challenges the notion of a solid and immobile mountain. The faltering image of the mountain is stabilized only after time does its work to calm the water. In experiencing the distorted image of the mountain created by Viola, viewers confront a poetic illustration of time and the illusion of stability, while also experiencing a work of tremendous beauty and calm.

The gallery will also present the solo exhibition of Jina Park, a contemporary artist known for employing snapshots that capture everyday scenes and translating them onto the canvas as paintings. Three years after her last exhibition at Kukje Gallery Busan, and the first time to be introduced to the gallery’s Seoul audiences, the exhibition will showcase paintings that portray ordinary moments reconstructed through the camera’s perspective and temporality. In this exhibition, Park focuses on “backstage” spaces—the people and objects situated behind the “Staff only” doors at exhibition installation sites, video production scenes, and restaurant kitchens. With repeated physical contact on the canvas, the transitory moments encountered by the artist—such as at Kukje Gallery’s restaurant kitchen or while preparing for her commissioned mural at the Busan Museum of Art—are invested with new materiality and spatio-temporal meaning.