Full description from the venue
ATELIER AKI is pleased to present 《 A Seasonal Study of the Everyday: Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring 》 , a solo exhibition by Shenzhen-based Korean artist Kwon Neung, on view from July 1 through August 8, 2026. Following his participation in the 2025 exhibition at the PARKSEOBO FOUNDATION, this marks the artist’s second solo presentation in Korea and will feature more than ten paintings in which historical imagery, contemporary visual culture, and the everyday lives of artists coexist within a single visual landscape. The exhibition examines how images and fragments of time from different eras are reassembled and recontextualized through a contemporary lens, inviting viewers into a new “landscape of the times” shaped by Kwon Neung’s distinctive gaze.
Kwon Neung does not perceive the past and present, East and West, art and everyday life, or reality and imagination as separate worlds. Within his paintings, religious iconography and classical masterpieces coexist alongside symbolic figures from art history, visual motifs circulated through mass media and popular culture, and scenes drawn from contemporary daily life. Emerging from disparate historical moments and cultural contexts, these visual elements move beyond mere quotation or decorative appropriation; within Kwon’s universe, they are reconfigured into new relationships that prompt us to reconsider what we recognize as art today, which images compel our attention, and what ultimately becomes embedded within memory. This artistic approach resonates closely with Charles Baudelaire’s notion of “modernity” as articulated in The Painter of Modern Life (Le Peintre de la vie moderne). Rather than defining the modern artist as one who solely pursues eternal and universal beauty, Baudelaire described the artist as someone capable of capturing the fleeting and ever-changing sensations of their own era. Even during a time when history painting, mythology, and religious subjects dominated artistic discourse, Baudelaire insisted that the crowds of the city, fashion, cafe culture, urban life, anonymous individuals, consumption, and desire could equally become essential subjects of art. Kwon Neung’s paintings similarly position painting not as a static historical form, but as a living visual language through which contemporary life and modern images can be continuously observed and reimagined. Within his layered compositions, figures from art history, including Vincent van Gogh, Andy Warhol, and Albrecht D?rer, coexist alongside imagery drawn from popular culture and mass media, traversing different eras and mediums within a single pictorial space. Yet these heterogeneous images do not merely collide or coexist. Through Kwon’s meticulous visual language, they are transformed into interwoven visual narratives that question how our realities are shaped by images, and what it is that we choose to believe, consume, and remember.
The exhibition title, 《 A Seasonal Study of the Everyday: Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring 》 , encapsulates Kwon Neung’s way of perceiving the world, one that rereads familiar scenes not through the linear order of time, but through shifting arrangements of sensation and perception. We are accustomed to engaging with time as a sequence that begins with spring and moves through summer, autumn, and winter. Yet the emotional rhythms of life rarely unfold in such an orderly progression. Even while walking the same streets or looking upon the same landscapes, there are moments when everything suddenly feels unfamiliar again, and scenes we believed we already understood return with entirely different impressions. For Kwon Neung, ‘A Seasonal Study of the Everyday’ speaks to these subtle transformations in perception that emerge through repetition, reflecting the fleeting moments in which ordinary scenes reappear as vivid, unfamiliar images.
The new paintings presented in this exhibition further articulate the artist’s ongoing exploration of contemporary life and image culture. In 〈 We Still Believe in Images 〉 (2026), Kwon reflects on painting as a medium that has long enabled humanity to believe in things beyond what is immediately visible. Gods and heroes, death and eternity, ideals and desire have historically taken form through images, allowing viewers to experience sensations that transcend reality itself. Today, visual information is endlessly produced and consumed through the internet and mass media, yet images continue to linger powerfully within memory and perception, shaping the ways we feel, remember, and believe. By weaving together the compositional structures of religious painting with contemporary visual language, Kwon explores how visual experiences continue to construct systems of belief within modern life. Meanwhile, 〈 At the Edge of Winter Light 〉 (2026) reveals Kwon’s unique perspective that different temporalities can coexist within a single pictorial space. Rather than describing a specific narrative or event, the figures within the work appear to inhabit the same season, atmosphere, and edge of light. For the artist, painting functions less as a device for recording time than as a site where past and present, memory and imagination, remain suspended together.
The exhibition 《 A Seasonal Study of the Everyday: Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring 》 illuminates the contemporary significance of Kwon Neung’s practice within today’s image-saturated visual culture, where countless images are continuously produced, circulated, and consumed. Rather than simply borrowing or rearranging images, Kwon explores how images continue to shape the structures of memory, emotion, desire, and belief, revealing the lingering psychological and cultural power they hold within contemporary life. Kwon’s paintings ultimately unfold within that subtle yet transformative moment when the familiar suddenly feels unfamiliar, and ordinary scenes quietly shift into the realm of art.