KIM HongJoo
Korea Tomorrow 2015
When one approaches dimly lit, cloud-like lumps floating in mid-air, one discovers small topographies on the surface: hills and vales, narrow meandering roads and gently rising slopes. When one gets closer still, the topographies reveal fine patterns composed of even smaller furrows and knolls, plants and puddles. These extremely fine details are connected to their surroundings through the flow of a constant rhythm until eventually, they connect to each other one-by-one to entirety in a steady beat. The undulating heights of small formations, the rhythmic flow and the connecting organs look like grains on the surface of the earth seen from high up in the sky. The whole form is embodied in the shape of a flower or leaf – parts of a plant – but at other times, it appears in the form of a spread-out surface like bojagi* or an unspecified map. Sometimes, the forms are composed of an indeterminate surface that seems to have been abruptly stopped while still being painted.
Kim Hong Joo’s paintings are composed of minute details that build up into a whole. The contrast between the tiny details and large-scale seems to almost test the viewer’s limits of sight. One even feels a kind of vertigo when looking at his paintings and realizes how such minute and elaborate structures can be revealed in a simple form. Seen up close, the densely packed small structures build up to a sensation of incredible depth but even so, the viewer is first drawn to the outline of the entire image and finds it difficult to concentrate on that depth. Vertigo caused by the contrast in the small and large scale allows the viewer to apply a new perspective on the painting. An ordinary viewer’s gaze is interrupted by this sense of abstraction (strictly in the sense of painting); the abstraction is caused by none other than the distance between the large scale created by the outline of the whole and the details that form its contents. Physical movement and characteristic of the paint revealed in an ordinary brushstroke, the overlapping of events revealed by the latter, and all of these processes mentioned here can be described as the tension between the paint and the brush that ultimately transforms all into a state of painterly pleasure. Brushstrokes in Kim Hong Joo’s work actively pursue this kind of painterly pleasure but it also seeks to diverge in a complete opposite direction. The artist creates microscopic brushstrokes using slender-writing brush by following the actual layer of the surface – the fibers of the canvas. According to the artist, his artworks become complete in the process of building up consistent brushstrokes rather than by painting with a particular outcome in mind. In other words, the shape of entirety may be viewed simply as the result arising from the process of pursuing successive brushstrokes.
The artist follows the stream of infinitely repetitive brushstrokes which becomes a single big abstract stain or spot at a certain point. The flow of endlessly repeated brushstrokes are clearly visible whether it takes on the shape of a flower, leaf, landscape, or a stain-like spot of an indiscernible shape. Accordingly, the experience of a state of self-abnegation in viewing his work differs from that of traditional Western fundamentals of painting. In particular, viewing Kim Hong Joo’s work delivers abstract inspiration from seeing not just a simple reproduction of a flower or leaf but in realizing the presence of un-seeable particles perceived beyond our line of sight. It is analogous to the taste buds of the tongue that each perceive distinctly and individually. At the same time, these particles, or small units demonstrate latent potential in the composition of the whole perceived image. The small units create tiny movements, minute differences, and a sense of direction on the canvas. The entirety is a sum of countless vectors; it is a movement of a small universe formed the complete set. Next follows a question of the basis for this visual – one that suggests an interrelation between the whole and its individual, independent units?
To discuss the oeuvre of Kim Hong Joo, his oil paintings of the early 1970s resembled minimalist abstract paintings more or less. He painted them using short, intensely colored brushstrokes in overlapping uniform patterns. The layered brushstrokes bore a resemblance to tapestries in that despite the minuteness and complexity of each stroke, they were still distinct. Overall, the paintings portrayed a current of colors in undulating waves, achieved through countless touches of the brush. Then by the mid-70s, the artist made a sudden shift to paint in the manner of extreme realism. The main themes in these works were subjects such as people, objects, or landscapes reflected on common reflective surfaces like mirror, window, or other metallic surfaces. For the next ten years until mid-80s, he continued to paint in this manner: in muted colors and restrained brushstrokes to show fine detail using slender-writing brushes – in the style of pre-19th century North European paintings, including those of Rene Magritte. Moreover, the artist used light, thinned paint on canvas on woodblocks, which he layered with paint repeatedly and finely until the individual brushstrokes disappeared in the colored shades as though he was removing the sensuality of the paint. In contrast, the brush’s presence is overstressed to the point of access in the spots and dripped stains on the window or window surface, intended to show wear and age. This kind of contradictory manner is especially more apparent in the fact that the artist decided to use actual existing objects in their original state – mirrors or window surfaces presented on the confines of a canvas. These objects of an overbearing presence do not contribute to the realism of the oil paintings but rather they make these painted reproductions seem even more like a faint illusion. Furthermore, the stains painted on top acts as a kind of intrusion like an outer cover for the reality, thus making the painting seem even less real. In these paintings, reality is presented as something highly temporal. The painting separates the object. The layers of object-frame and painting-filter are made visible and presence is depicted as a symbol of passing time. In other words, reality is portrayed as a kind of mirage in contemporary structure of painting.
Next to consider are the reasons for this sudden transition for the artist to shift from creating monochrome-like canvases filled with abstract brushstrokes to creating reproductions in the manner of extreme realism. Perhaps one can say that the artist was affected by the socio-political situation of the 70-80s or that his reasons are rooted in his occupation with contradictory reality surrounding the creation of art. But then, who can deny that other artists in Korean society during the same society did not experience the kind of same distress? Perhaps one should then distinguish a common element of Kim Hong Joo’s work that continued throughout this historical timeline. It cannot be disputed that there have been many variations and shifts in Kim’s work throughout the years. He has experimented with various mediums and forms and to list even a few: he created minimalist paintings, hyperrealist paintings, and later throughout the mid-80s he created expressionist flower paintings, followed by landscapes comprised of symbols, silkscreen works resembling pop art as well as his well-known ‘flower-paintings’ painted using slender-writing brushes. However, there is one element shared in all of his works even when we consider this complex and vast range of works; that is the ‘titles’. Almost all of Kim Hong Joo’s paintings are ‘Untitled’. Thus, without titles, a person who tries to refer to his work finds it difficult to point out a specific work. According to the artist, this follows his intent that the viewer should simply ‘appreciate’ his work from the given visual element. The experience of the painting should happen in a state before interpretation or analysis of a specific fact or event. Naming an artwork with a specific title affects the delivery and reception of the painted subject. In contrast, his paintings are only remembered as a specific image to its viewers rather than being received as a specific concept or a subject of a narrative. In addition, paintings by Kim Hong Joo further amplifies the alienated reality, presented as an illusion through painting by limiting its conceptual reference when one considers that what is unnamed does not even exist in the view of nominalism.
In the late 80s to early 90s, Kim Hong Joo began his ‘symbol-paintings’, also known as ‘letter-paintings’ and ‘crap-paintings’. Artist claims he was inspired by the scenes of heaps of soil covered in water that he saw through his window during his train rides to Seoul from his home in Daejeon. The heaps of earth depicted in these paintings look like signs that arose from the subconscious. They also look like furrows scattered about the ridges between rice paddies after a fall harvest and at other times, more specifically – they are reminiscent of a person or a line from a poem. The symbols in these paintings are founded in their most basic element before they are given a specific meaning; they go waver between reflecting other derivative symbols. Fragments of zero upheaving from the ground either assumes a form that bear similitude with language or they are appear like pebbles and stones scattered about on the earth’s surface seen from a bird’s eye view. All in all, symbols are comprised of mounds of soil, brushstrokes, phonemes of language, pebbles on earth, shadows of trees cast on the water surface, as well as sentences and images from current newspapers magazines – in order to depict a part of our reality that can be captured at the level of the artist’s perception and conscious. Mirage-like images that glistened in the mirror or window of Kim Hong Joo’s early realist paintings slowly begin to take on symbolic forms on the canvas. These symbol-particles are found everywhere like dust or small traces of dirt. They are dispersed in our surroundings through sounds, languages, images, or they are clustered together. Time and space sometimes push them away but they are also filled by them. These particles that ceaselessly sway back and forth like waves unexpectedly threaten life and then in the next moment, swiftly and calmly they flock together like the essence of life.
By the mid-90s, Kim Hong Joo began to use slender-writing brushes to paint symbol-particles in tiny units. In ‘letter-paintings’, empty spaces on the canvas between the units of symbols that cut across the letter-symbols like plowed rows in a field are now transformed into an ambience of dense air. Mirrors, windows, and other scenes and surfaces that reflected the common disorder in the previous work are replaced by the likes of a large flower bud or a leaf that has just fallen on the ground. Moreover, paintings of flowers painted in faint shades are difficult to read. The depth of the layered flower petals of a fully bloomed flower is unknown and the viewer can only discern the shape of the flower through its contours and its color. In fact, it may be more correct to say that the presented form is not a flower but an illusion of a flower, formed by an assembly of countless particles. The flower can be compared to a Buddhist Mandara when one considers the minute particles of pigment finely layered on top of each other. Hence, when one understands the artist’s intent to reflect on the intuition of infinitude of the ephemeral subject through the fulfillment of impassivity from all thoughts and ideas through these flower paintings, the analogy of a Mandara seems even more apt. Flowers are an ensemble of countless units, when the work is seen from afar, it parallels the concept of ‘flower-earth’ or ‘flower-universe’. Like the Indra’s Net that reflects the entire universe in Avatamska Sutra, tiny particles of small beads that form the net not only reflect each other but they also reflect the reflection of the reflected reflection in an unending cycle. Small brushstrokes that form the particle-symbols in Kim Hong Joo’s flower paintings are connected to each other through empty spaces; the connections are never blocked nor brought to an end. They are simply connected to each other in the form of a large flower. Individual particles are presented to the viewer as an exclamation of a great rapture bringing together innumerable units gathered as one.
Recently Kim Hong Joo has been painting ‘landscapes’ once again. In these paintings, he reveals the core theme of painting – the critical crossroad of the world and its representation. In doing so, he has reduced his brushstroke-particles to a microscopic scale. Green mountains at dusk softly overlapped with a skyline in addition to currents resembling a flowing stream – all elements often found in Korean landscape paintings – are the clues to recognizing these paintings as landscapes. Nevertheless, paintings of flower and mountains are ultimately not different. It is only a pretext in which the subjects can be recognized in a specific form of a flower or a mountain; they are still an ensemble of brushstroke-particles. Yet, these landscapes appear simpler and more abstract. In fact, abstractness was both a perplexing issue and a drive in Kim Hong Joo’s paintings. Perhaps one can say limiting the political realism of 70s-80s through extreme abstraction was an attempt to resolve various conditions and conflicts of reality, whereas Kim Hong Joo was able to build up an analytical construct that penetrates his entire oeuvre through his deep agony about how phenomena could make its mark in the history of painting. This analytical construct is the basis for the unique abstraction in his work. Abstractness mentioned here in particular signifies a materialization of the cause for abstractness created in the viewer’s gaze, not in the representation of an abstract form. This kind of abstraction reveals ever so clearly: the difference in the viewpoint of the artist and the viewer, the general distance perceived by the viewer, the difference in the positioning of the internal elements of the work, and the flow and rhythm created in the reciprocal action of the brushstrokes.
We can only find out how in the life of an artist, one creates an independent world – by looking at the artist’s life in whole. However, for a viewer admiring the exceptionally beautiful and massive shapes formed of a myriad of Kim’s subtle brushstrokes, understanding how he has come to make these paintings and realizing their motive may only be a secondary problem in appreciating them. But it is worth remembering that the separation between art and the world pronounced in the stained mirror surface is now brought together again through countless small brushstroke-particles and this process delivers beauty and pleasure through painting. The world presented in these paintings is a nameless place in which innumerable existing-particles co-exist beautifully. The artist paints this place while exhausting his life. Hundreds and thousands of forms are presented in lieu of that place but the utopia painted by the artist is always the same. It is a place reflected on the mirror or the train window – surrounded by endless images and noise, always a Hua-yen formation of ‘symbol-particles’ whose ending is unknown; it is a place where the self is at the present.
Kim Hong Joo’s paintings are composed of minute details that build up into a whole. The contrast between the tiny details and large-scale seems to almost test the viewer’s limits of sight. One even feels a kind of vertigo when looking at his paintings and realizes how such minute and elaborate structures can be revealed in a simple form. Seen up close, the densely packed small structures build up to a sensation of incredible depth but even so, the viewer is first drawn to the outline of the entire image and finds it difficult to concentrate on that depth. Vertigo caused by the contrast in the small and large scale allows the viewer to apply a new perspective on the painting. An ordinary viewer’s gaze is interrupted by this sense of abstraction (strictly in the sense of painting); the abstraction is caused by none other than the distance between the large scale created by the outline of the whole and the details that form its contents. Physical movement and characteristic of the paint revealed in an ordinary brushstroke, the overlapping of events revealed by the latter, and all of these processes mentioned here can be described as the tension between the paint and the brush that ultimately transforms all into a state of painterly pleasure. Brushstrokes in Kim Hong Joo’s work actively pursue this kind of painterly pleasure but it also seeks to diverge in a complete opposite direction. The artist creates microscopic brushstrokes using slender-writing brush by following the actual layer of the surface – the fibers of the canvas. According to the artist, his artworks become complete in the process of building up consistent brushstrokes rather than by painting with a particular outcome in mind. In other words, the shape of entirety may be viewed simply as the result arising from the process of pursuing successive brushstrokes.
The artist follows the stream of infinitely repetitive brushstrokes which becomes a single big abstract stain or spot at a certain point. The flow of endlessly repeated brushstrokes are clearly visible whether it takes on the shape of a flower, leaf, landscape, or a stain-like spot of an indiscernible shape. Accordingly, the experience of a state of self-abnegation in viewing his work differs from that of traditional Western fundamentals of painting. In particular, viewing Kim Hong Joo’s work delivers abstract inspiration from seeing not just a simple reproduction of a flower or leaf but in realizing the presence of un-seeable particles perceived beyond our line of sight. It is analogous to the taste buds of the tongue that each perceive distinctly and individually. At the same time, these particles, or small units demonstrate latent potential in the composition of the whole perceived image. The small units create tiny movements, minute differences, and a sense of direction on the canvas. The entirety is a sum of countless vectors; it is a movement of a small universe formed the complete set. Next follows a question of the basis for this visual – one that suggests an interrelation between the whole and its individual, independent units?
To discuss the oeuvre of Kim Hong Joo, his oil paintings of the early 1970s resembled minimalist abstract paintings more or less. He painted them using short, intensely colored brushstrokes in overlapping uniform patterns. The layered brushstrokes bore a resemblance to tapestries in that despite the minuteness and complexity of each stroke, they were still distinct. Overall, the paintings portrayed a current of colors in undulating waves, achieved through countless touches of the brush. Then by the mid-70s, the artist made a sudden shift to paint in the manner of extreme realism. The main themes in these works were subjects such as people, objects, or landscapes reflected on common reflective surfaces like mirror, window, or other metallic surfaces. For the next ten years until mid-80s, he continued to paint in this manner: in muted colors and restrained brushstrokes to show fine detail using slender-writing brushes – in the style of pre-19th century North European paintings, including those of Rene Magritte. Moreover, the artist used light, thinned paint on canvas on woodblocks, which he layered with paint repeatedly and finely until the individual brushstrokes disappeared in the colored shades as though he was removing the sensuality of the paint. In contrast, the brush’s presence is overstressed to the point of access in the spots and dripped stains on the window or window surface, intended to show wear and age. This kind of contradictory manner is especially more apparent in the fact that the artist decided to use actual existing objects in their original state – mirrors or window surfaces presented on the confines of a canvas. These objects of an overbearing presence do not contribute to the realism of the oil paintings but rather they make these painted reproductions seem even more like a faint illusion. Furthermore, the stains painted on top acts as a kind of intrusion like an outer cover for the reality, thus making the painting seem even less real. In these paintings, reality is presented as something highly temporal. The painting separates the object. The layers of object-frame and painting-filter are made visible and presence is depicted as a symbol of passing time. In other words, reality is portrayed as a kind of mirage in contemporary structure of painting.
Next to consider are the reasons for this sudden transition for the artist to shift from creating monochrome-like canvases filled with abstract brushstrokes to creating reproductions in the manner of extreme realism. Perhaps one can say that the artist was affected by the socio-political situation of the 70-80s or that his reasons are rooted in his occupation with contradictory reality surrounding the creation of art. But then, who can deny that other artists in Korean society during the same society did not experience the kind of same distress? Perhaps one should then distinguish a common element of Kim Hong Joo’s work that continued throughout this historical timeline. It cannot be disputed that there have been many variations and shifts in Kim’s work throughout the years. He has experimented with various mediums and forms and to list even a few: he created minimalist paintings, hyperrealist paintings, and later throughout the mid-80s he created expressionist flower paintings, followed by landscapes comprised of symbols, silkscreen works resembling pop art as well as his well-known ‘flower-paintings’ painted using slender-writing brushes. However, there is one element shared in all of his works even when we consider this complex and vast range of works; that is the ‘titles’. Almost all of Kim Hong Joo’s paintings are ‘Untitled’. Thus, without titles, a person who tries to refer to his work finds it difficult to point out a specific work. According to the artist, this follows his intent that the viewer should simply ‘appreciate’ his work from the given visual element. The experience of the painting should happen in a state before interpretation or analysis of a specific fact or event. Naming an artwork with a specific title affects the delivery and reception of the painted subject. In contrast, his paintings are only remembered as a specific image to its viewers rather than being received as a specific concept or a subject of a narrative. In addition, paintings by Kim Hong Joo further amplifies the alienated reality, presented as an illusion through painting by limiting its conceptual reference when one considers that what is unnamed does not even exist in the view of nominalism.
In the late 80s to early 90s, Kim Hong Joo began his ‘symbol-paintings’, also known as ‘letter-paintings’ and ‘crap-paintings’. Artist claims he was inspired by the scenes of heaps of soil covered in water that he saw through his window during his train rides to Seoul from his home in Daejeon. The heaps of earth depicted in these paintings look like signs that arose from the subconscious. They also look like furrows scattered about the ridges between rice paddies after a fall harvest and at other times, more specifically – they are reminiscent of a person or a line from a poem. The symbols in these paintings are founded in their most basic element before they are given a specific meaning; they go waver between reflecting other derivative symbols. Fragments of zero upheaving from the ground either assumes a form that bear similitude with language or they are appear like pebbles and stones scattered about on the earth’s surface seen from a bird’s eye view. All in all, symbols are comprised of mounds of soil, brushstrokes, phonemes of language, pebbles on earth, shadows of trees cast on the water surface, as well as sentences and images from current newspapers magazines – in order to depict a part of our reality that can be captured at the level of the artist’s perception and conscious. Mirage-like images that glistened in the mirror or window of Kim Hong Joo’s early realist paintings slowly begin to take on symbolic forms on the canvas. These symbol-particles are found everywhere like dust or small traces of dirt. They are dispersed in our surroundings through sounds, languages, images, or they are clustered together. Time and space sometimes push them away but they are also filled by them. These particles that ceaselessly sway back and forth like waves unexpectedly threaten life and then in the next moment, swiftly and calmly they flock together like the essence of life.
By the mid-90s, Kim Hong Joo began to use slender-writing brushes to paint symbol-particles in tiny units. In ‘letter-paintings’, empty spaces on the canvas between the units of symbols that cut across the letter-symbols like plowed rows in a field are now transformed into an ambience of dense air. Mirrors, windows, and other scenes and surfaces that reflected the common disorder in the previous work are replaced by the likes of a large flower bud or a leaf that has just fallen on the ground. Moreover, paintings of flowers painted in faint shades are difficult to read. The depth of the layered flower petals of a fully bloomed flower is unknown and the viewer can only discern the shape of the flower through its contours and its color. In fact, it may be more correct to say that the presented form is not a flower but an illusion of a flower, formed by an assembly of countless particles. The flower can be compared to a Buddhist Mandara when one considers the minute particles of pigment finely layered on top of each other. Hence, when one understands the artist’s intent to reflect on the intuition of infinitude of the ephemeral subject through the fulfillment of impassivity from all thoughts and ideas through these flower paintings, the analogy of a Mandara seems even more apt. Flowers are an ensemble of countless units, when the work is seen from afar, it parallels the concept of ‘flower-earth’ or ‘flower-universe’. Like the Indra’s Net that reflects the entire universe in Avatamska Sutra, tiny particles of small beads that form the net not only reflect each other but they also reflect the reflection of the reflected reflection in an unending cycle. Small brushstrokes that form the particle-symbols in Kim Hong Joo’s flower paintings are connected to each other through empty spaces; the connections are never blocked nor brought to an end. They are simply connected to each other in the form of a large flower. Individual particles are presented to the viewer as an exclamation of a great rapture bringing together innumerable units gathered as one.
Recently Kim Hong Joo has been painting ‘landscapes’ once again. In these paintings, he reveals the core theme of painting – the critical crossroad of the world and its representation. In doing so, he has reduced his brushstroke-particles to a microscopic scale. Green mountains at dusk softly overlapped with a skyline in addition to currents resembling a flowing stream – all elements often found in Korean landscape paintings – are the clues to recognizing these paintings as landscapes. Nevertheless, paintings of flower and mountains are ultimately not different. It is only a pretext in which the subjects can be recognized in a specific form of a flower or a mountain; they are still an ensemble of brushstroke-particles. Yet, these landscapes appear simpler and more abstract. In fact, abstractness was both a perplexing issue and a drive in Kim Hong Joo’s paintings. Perhaps one can say limiting the political realism of 70s-80s through extreme abstraction was an attempt to resolve various conditions and conflicts of reality, whereas Kim Hong Joo was able to build up an analytical construct that penetrates his entire oeuvre through his deep agony about how phenomena could make its mark in the history of painting. This analytical construct is the basis for the unique abstraction in his work. Abstractness mentioned here in particular signifies a materialization of the cause for abstractness created in the viewer’s gaze, not in the representation of an abstract form. This kind of abstraction reveals ever so clearly: the difference in the viewpoint of the artist and the viewer, the general distance perceived by the viewer, the difference in the positioning of the internal elements of the work, and the flow and rhythm created in the reciprocal action of the brushstrokes.
We can only find out how in the life of an artist, one creates an independent world – by looking at the artist’s life in whole. However, for a viewer admiring the exceptionally beautiful and massive shapes formed of a myriad of Kim’s subtle brushstrokes, understanding how he has come to make these paintings and realizing their motive may only be a secondary problem in appreciating them. But it is worth remembering that the separation between art and the world pronounced in the stained mirror surface is now brought together again through countless small brushstroke-particles and this process delivers beauty and pleasure through painting. The world presented in these paintings is a nameless place in which innumerable existing-particles co-exist beautifully. The artist paints this place while exhausting his life. Hundreds and thousands of forms are presented in lieu of that place but the utopia painted by the artist is always the same. It is a place reflected on the mirror or the train window – surrounded by endless images and noise, always a Hua-yen formation of ‘symbol-particles’ whose ending is unknown; it is a place where the self is at the present.
*Bojagi is a traditional Korean wrapping cloth. It is square and was often pieced together using leftover scraps of fabric.
Excerpted from Kim Hong Joo, Kukje Gallery, 2010, p.15-21
Kim Hong Joo: Flower in the World
Jinsang Yoo / Art Critic
KIM HongJoo
Born in 1945, Hoin, Chung-buk, Korea
EDUCATION
1981 M.F.A., Painting, College of Fine Arts, Hong Ik University
1969 B.F.A., Painting, College of Fine Arts, Hong Ik University
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITION
2010 KIM HongJoo, Kukje Gallery, Seoul, Korea
2009 Unlatching Time & Space, Arko Art Center, Seoul, Korea
2006 KIM HongJoo Solo Exhibition, Daegu Culture and Arts Center, Daegu, Korea
2005 KIM HongJoo-Inside and Outside of Image, Rodin Gallery, Seoul, Kkorea
2002 KIM HongJoo, Kukje Gallery, Seoul, Korea
2001 KIM HongJoo, Hyundai Art Center, Ulsan, Korea
1999 KIM HongJoo, Kukje Gallery, Seoul, Korea
1997 KIM HongJoo, Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
1996 KIM HongJoo, Soo Gallery, Seoul, Korea
1987 KIM HongJoo, Yoon Gallery, Seoul, Korea
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITION
2014 Zeitgeist Korea, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea
2012 (Im)Possible Landscape, Plateau, Seoul, Korea
2009 On Every Border Flower Blooms, Daejeon Museum of Art, Daejeon, Korea
2008 Transcendence : Modernity and Beyond in Korean Art, Singapore Art Museum, Singapore
2007 Void in Korean Art, Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
2006 Illusion / Disillusion, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
2004 Officina Asia, Galleria d’arte Moderna, Bologna, Galleria Comunale d’Arte, Cesena, Pallazzo dell’Arengo, Rimini, Italy
2003 Leaning Forward, Looking Back: Eight Contemporary Korean Artists, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, USA
2002 Babel 2002, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Gwacheon, Korea
2001 Illusion and Reality: Hyper Realism Painting in Korea and America,
Ho-Am Art Gallery, Seoul, Korea
