Jung Hyundoo, Reversed World – Cloud Shadow, 240908-1008, Oil on canvas, 225x120cm. ©Jung Hyundoo
Sungkok Art Museum is presenting 《SAM 2025 Open Call》, an exhibition running
through January 18, 2026, as part of its program dedicated to discovering and
supporting emerging Korean artists engaged in innovative creative practices.
Centered on the question, “What does
painting look like today?”, the exhibition explores new possibilities for
contemporary painting through the works of three young Korean artists selected
through the 2025 Open Call: Jung Hyundoo, Miran Yang, and Dongho Kang.
1. Jung Hyundoo, 《shuffle》
Jung Hyundoo’s paintings focus less on the
finished result than on capturing the changes generated by sensation, time, and
bodily movement during the act of painting. Rather than representing specific
subjects, he responds improvisationally to amorphous, emerging images,
recording physical sensations through brushstrokes and color that follow the
movements of his arms and body.
The exhibition title “shuffle” symbolizes a
strategic process of mixing time, images, sensations, and bodily traces within
painting to generate new relationships and meanings. In this way, Jung’s
practice experiments with an open form of painting that continually escapes
fixed meanings and remains in a state of ongoing transformation and
reinterpretation.
Miran Yang, Untitled, 2025, Oil on canvas, 20x25cm ©Miran Yang
2. Miran Yang, 《The
Cheerful Light, the Thoughtful Light》
Based in Frankfurt, Miran Yang has explored
the relationships between opposing forces—such as humans and nature, life and
death, and soul and body—through contrasts of light and darkness. In her recent
work, she has turned her attention to the affective qualities of materials and
nonhuman entities, as well as the relational dynamics that emerge between them.
The paintings and video works presented in
this exhibition investigate the relationship between light and being in a
multilayered manner, unfolding moments in which the human, the nonhuman, and
the material world resonate with and connect to one another through a
consistent and attentive gaze.
Dongho Kang, Room, 2024, Acrylic on canvas, 34.8x27.3cm ©Dongho Kang
3. Dongho Kang, 《The Third Meaning》
The Third Meaning by Dongho Kang is an
exhibition that invites viewers to see everyday objects that usually pass by
unnoticed through a renewed perspective. Without exaggeration, Kang arranges
his subjects in balanced proportions and emphasizes their contours with black
outlines, directing attention to the objects themselves. Even the most ordinary
things acquire a different presence and open up new possibilities for
interpretation within his pictorial space.
By reconfiguring objects through
unconventional compositions and viewpoints, Kang generates an ineffable
afterimage within the frame, proposing an experience in which viewers sense and
construct meaning for themselves. His paintings ultimately function as “open
paintings” that are completed through the viewer’s participation, offering a
reflective space in which additional layers of meaning can be discovered within
the familiar.
