Kukje Gallery opens 2026 with two solo exhibitions in the first half of the year.
 
In the gallery’s Hanok and K3 spaces, Kukje Gallery will present the first solo exhibition in Korea by Korean-Canadian artist Lotus L. Kang. Titled 《Chora》, the exhibition draws on the atmospheric conditions of the Hanok’s inner courtyard—an open void held within architectural borders—as a point of departure, quietly carrying its sensibility into the corresponding site in K3.
 
Also, Park Chan-kyong’s solo exhibition 《Zen Master Eyeball》 will open in the K1 space. Over the past three decades, Park has examined modernity in Korea and East Asia through an incisive lens, focusing on national division, the Cold War, and vernacular belief systems. The exhibition will bring together more than twenty new paintings, marking a shift from Park’s previous practice centered on writing, photography, film, and installation.

In the meantime, Kukje Gallery will present 《On the Move》, a solo exhibition by Hong Seung-Hye at the Busan space. The upcoming exhibition in Busan brings together works that trace her exploration of movement, spanning from her two-dimensional image created in the early 2000s to later developments in animation and performance. Her geometric forms, conceived on the computer screen, acquire a sense of temporality as they move across the frame, generating sensory and emotional resonance without relying on narrative.
 
In early summer, a solo exhibition of Robert Mapplethorpe will take place in Hanok. This exhibition seeks to move beyond the social reverberations sparked by this collision between art and taboo, focusing instead on his formal genius and artistic voice. Centering particularly on portraiture and still lifes, including his iconic floral images, the exhibition highlights the meticulously framed compositions and exquisite balance that underlie his oeuvre, independent of the timeliness or notoriety of its subjects.

At the same time, Kukje Gallery is excited to present a group exhibition in K1 and K2 curated by Koo Bohnchang, an artist widely celebrated for his instrumental role in shaping the trajectory of contemporary Korean photography. Having passed through the era of Photoshop and now entered the age of artificial intelligence (AI), the distinctions between images captured directly through the lens and those manipulated by new technologies have grown increasingly elusive. The exhibition seeks to reaffirm the fundamental importance of observing and recording the world.
 
Centered around traditional still-life works by Korean photographers active since the 2000s, the exhibition shifts its emphasis away from particular photographic techniques and instead focuses on the “lens,” the core component of the camera, as a means of observing objects and exploring their material presence. Featuring works that depict familiar yet quietly enduring subjects, the exhibition invites viewers to consider the ways in which the existence of a thing is revealed, reflecting on new modes of seeing and thinking through the photographic image.
 
The second half of 2026 begins with a solo exhibition in Busan by Korakrit Arunanondchai, an artist whose practice moves fluidly across video, performance, painting, and installation. Combining a wide range of idioms and materials with remarkable precision, Arunanondchai has consistently posed fundamental questions about existence and meaning—spanning the personal and the collective, life and death, and various systems of belief. In his upcoming Busan exhibition, Arunanondchai will revisit the video works he created over the years, using them as a starting point to further explore and expand the possibilities of his deeply personal moving-image language.

In the late summer, the gallery will present a major solo exhibition of Park Seo-Bo, marking the third year since his passing. Spanning the K1, K3, and the Hanok spaces, the exhibition will take the artist’s remark, “If one does not change, one falls. Yet if one changes, one also falls,” as its starting point.
 
Following the arc of transformation from his first Écriture pencil works from 1967 to his final newspaper Écriture series of 2023, the exhibition traces more than fifty years of evolution. Rather than presenting this evolution as a simple chronology of stylistic variations, this comprehensive exhibition will illuminate Park’s “philosophy of change,” exploring how it was shaped by the interplay of thought and body, material and environment, resulting in the many distinctive phases of the artist’s practice. Ultimately, the exhibition will present a poignant meditation on what “change” meant to Park Seo-Bo, and how the combination of discipline and openness became a driving force in his remarkable life.
 
During this same period, the first solo exhibition of Seeun Kim will open in the K2 space. Kim’s paintings focus on today’s urban environment—an ever-shifting landscape continually reorganized by the forces of economic value and efficiency—and confront the spatial and temporal transformations that inevitably arise within it. In a city where changes outpace one’s ability to form an understanding, the artist examines the countless moments in which individuals are compelled either to adapt or to resist. Kim searches for new visual vocabulary while exploring the questions that emerge from encounters through physical and mental engagements. 

Towards the end of the year, Kukje Gallery looks forward to hosting a solo exhibition of Jenny Holzer in the Hanok space. For more than four decades, Holzer has used language as her primary medium. It is through incisive aphorisms and poetic texts that she engages with pressing social issues and injustices. Her concise, incisive statements, which often prompt reflection of everyday power dynamics, have appeared on surfaces of varied materiality and scale, including LED displays, marble, building facades, and clothing.
 
In this exhibition, situated within the more intimate setting of Hanok, the artist once again invites viewers to read and contemplate political and personal texts at shifting distances as they construct their own sense of balance between the individual and the collective.
 
Coinciding with the Hanok exhibition, Heejoon Lee will present a solo exhibition of his mixed media works in the K1 and K2 spaces. Closely observing the rapidly accelerating digital environment of contemporary society, Lee explores the role and sustainability of painting, reinterpreting the methodologies of photography and sculpture to depict a range of experiences drawn from urban and architectural spaces.

References

• 국제갤러리 보도자료 (Kukje Gallery Press Release)