Hyunjoung Lee, Eunhee Maeng: Timescapes

GALLERY EXHIBITION | Namuso Gallery is pleased to present Timescape: the Thread of Life and the Universe in the Moment, a duo exhibition by Korean artists Eunhee Maeng and Hyunjoung Lee. This exhibition marks Maeng’s first presentation in Europe with her latest works, while for Lee this represents the second duo exhibition at the gallery — both artists are deeply informed by Korean traditions yet expand them through contemporary abstraction.

As Korean artists, Maeng and Lee contribute to a lineage that reinterprets the legacies of Dansaekhwa (Korean monochrome painting) and meditative practice through highly personal approaches. Their works emphasize time, gesture, and materiality, offering reflections not only on the continuity of Korean abstraction but also on its evolving place within global contemporary art.

Eunhee Maeng (b. 1966, South Korea) exercises her very own meditative process centered on long, focused, and uninterrupted sessions of expressing her inner movement on canvas with her characteristic use of mostly blue acrylic. Her gestural, calligraphic strokes emerge instinctively into luminous textured gradations of blue, evoking silence, rhythm, and meditation. Color functions as a psychological and emotional register — blue as stillness and healing — while curves and arcs embody the force of gesture.

Hyunjoung Lee (b. 1972, South Korea; based in Paris) works with her very own hand-crafted Hanji (Korean traditional paper), on which, in long calm and meditative sessions, she gradually and iteratively evolves a landscape in ink and pigment. Her practice reimagines landscape through texture and light, creating dreamlike terrains where mountain ranges, seas, and shifting skies suggest both individual memory and the path of human life.

The works of Maeng and Lee differ significantly in their creative process as much as in their visual statements, yet they strikingly complement each other — revealing two aspects of human life: the experience of the very moments of life by Maeng and their culmination into the paths we all take by Lee.

Both artists cultivate a monochromic and meditative language of abstraction that transcends representation, drawing the viewer into contemplative spaces where art becomes an act of renewal and inspiration.