Jang Pa, Gore Deco - Oh, Those Breasts, 2025, Oil, Oil, oil pastel, gauze, jute, human hair, transfer print on linen, 162.2 x 130.3 cm, Courtesy of the artist and Kukje Gallery, Photo by Chunho An. ©Kukje Gallery
Kukje Gallery presents a solo exhibition 《Gore Deco》 by artist
Jang Pa, on view through February 15, 2026, at K1 and K2.
Jang Pa has
explored the visually rendered forms of the feminine grotesque and historically
othered sensitivities through painting and writing, critiquing fixed notions of
“painting” and “beauty.” Questioning male-centered visual languages, she
expands feminist subjectivity through painterly expression and reconstructs the
female body and its sensorial experiences as autonomous figures.
This solo exhibition—her first at Kukje
Gallery—presents approximately 45 works across various media, including
paintings from her eponymous series ‘Gore Deco,’ as well as drawings, etchings,
and silkscreen murals. Through these works, the artist recontextualizes
traditional images of women, employing humor and subversion to overturn
established modes of looking.
Jang Pa, Gore Deco – The Origin of the World, 2025, Oil, oil pastel, silkscreen, transfer print on linen, 227.3 x 162.1 cm, Courtesy of the artist and Kukje Gallery, Photo by Chunho An. ©Kukje Gallery
《Gore Deco》 critically
investigates the ways in which bodies and identities become embedded within
violent social structures, while also drawing attention to the hierarchical
implications embedded in the notion of “decoration.”
“Gore” evokes the physical and symbolic
violence inflicted upon bodies that have been marginalized from the
center—women, queer individuals, and other minority subjects—whereas “Deco”
refers to ornamentation, often dismissed as trivial or secondary, and the
aesthetic and social orders entangled with it.
By juxtaposing these two disparate
sensibilities, the exhibition unfolds painterly tensions and fractures between
body and ornament, the sublime and the grotesque, hierarchy and pleasure.
Rather than simply dismantling, negating, or cynically rejecting painterly
traditions, the works invite viewers to sensorially confront the narrowness of
existing orders and to witness the expanded boundaries of painterly expression
and the possibilities of a new aesthetic.
Jang Pa, Drawing for Gore Deco #1, 2025, Charcoal on paper, 112x76cm, Courtesy of the artist and Kukje Gallery, Photo by Chunho An. ©Kukje Gallery
《Gore Deco》 seeks
to restore perspectives overlooked by the traditional hierarchies embedded
within painting by drawing on the sensibilities of marginalized subjects and
employing new visual strategies. In doing so, the exhibition expands the
diversity and fluidity of contemporary painterly language. It is an attempt to
explore painting’s potential—and to reconfigure its limits—through the mediated
experiences of marginalized bodies and the aesthetics of ornamentation.
Jang Pa’s references to art history and the
history of images, along with her use of diverse materials associated with the
female body, may at times appear improvisational or even resistant, accompanied
by humor laced with sarcasm. Ultimately, however, these strategies function as
a site that reveals the artist’s clear gaze and earnest commitment toward
painting.
