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This edition’s advertised period has ended. Below is the information published for 2026; it does not confirm that the event took place.

Unexpected guest. · 2026 · Historical listing

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Information for this edition

Dates
Oct 7, 2026 — Oct 28, 2026
Place
Gallery Now · 16 Eonju-ro 152-gil, Gangnam-gu, Seoul
Admission at the time
Free
Facts last checked
2026-10-19
First preserved here
2026-10-19

Published programme

In Kim Yeon-su's paintings, nature is reconstructed through the intervention of memory and emotion. From early works depicting scenery glimpsed while travelling to recent paintings of wild plants, trees, clouds and waves, Kim's interest has never been in reproducing objective forms. Scenes actually witnessed are transformed in memory and joined with the emotions felt when encountering them again. Nature becomes both an external subject and a medium through which the artist recognizes their own state of mind. This work differs from transferring an already understood emotion into a painting. A scene encountered by chance in daily life evokes an emotional response that is difficult to explain, and the artist picks up a brush in the process of discovering what that response is. Rubbing, drawing and layering thin paint both depicts a subject and gradually gives concrete form to an indistinct sensation. In paintings that combine the strokes and breathing rhythms of East Asian painting with the material qualities of oil paint and overlapping colours, open contours and repeated brushwork reveal states that change with time and surroundings rather than fixing the forms of objects. Painting becomes a form that includes the process of recognizing emotion rather than a means of conveying an emotion already complete. Building on this development, Unexpected Guest places a new emphasis on the artist's approach to landscape and emotion. Like an emotion that arrives unexpectedly, nature encountered by chance can suddenly catch the artist's eye and reveal feelings not previously recognized. Whereas earlier work gradually recognized and organized indistinct emotions through painting, this exhibition does not insist on bringing those emotions to a clear meaning. It does not abandon the exploration of emotion; rather, it avoids setting a conclusion that painting must reach in advance. In easily overlooked natural sights—a small flower among grasses, reeds swaying in the wind, a bird by flowing water—the artist preserves the impression of the chance encounter and the emotion of that moment instead of explaining the subjects. Mixing colours and repeating brushstrokes shapes the forms and atmosphere of nature without resolving the emotion into a single answer. For the artist, Unexpected Guest is an attempt to accept an unknowable emotion as it is; for viewers, it offers a chance to look again at familiar nature through their own experience. — Yu Han-sik, curator, Gallery Now

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