Wondersquare
원더스퀘어
Group show
Museumhead, Seoul
May 1 - June 28, 2025
... The exhibition contemplates painting’s “form,” “substance,” and “method,” attempting a kind of “anchoring” of the medium. Behind this lies a scepticism toward the way much painting—especially Korean abstract painting—has been interpreted primarily in terms of the psychology of an individual, idealism, or transcendence. In abstraction, “impassioned” brushstrokes, “dismantled” figures, and “atmosphere” of the picture plane have often been read as allegories of inner states or spiritual sublimation. Such readings, overly tethered to emotion and mind, risk confining contemporary painting’s self-referential, deconstructive properties—its potential for advance and transition—within a narrow conception of abstraction and the myth of a powerless transcendence. ... The “anchoring” of Wondersquare is not a mere metaphor. Here, “anchoring” means re-examining painting in literal terms of objects, materials, and methods. It is also an inquiry into the conditions and premises under which painting operates, and into the cultural and historical contexts that shape them.
_Hyukgue Kwon (curator of Museumhead)