Hoon Kwak: Recent Works

At the same time, the exhibition introduces a new series of works on paper for the first time. Here, Kwak returns to materials that have long been central to his practice—oil, pencil, and paper collage. Taking the X-shaped motif, which has repeatedly appeared in earlier bodies of work such as Incantation and Chi , as a point of departure, he develops a wide range of variations through collage and décollage, as well as the expansion, transformation, and fragmentation of signs across paper stained and permeated with burnt sienna oil paint.

The exhibition is therefore more than a presentation of the artist’s latest works. It brings into view the moment at which one body of work comes to an end and another, not yet named, begins. In this sense, the exhibition serves as a record of a transitional moment in Kwak’s painting practice.

Installed on the gallery’s third-floor terrace is Kwak’s monumental installation Kalpa/Sound: What Marco Polo Left Behind, 1995 , originally presented in the inaugural exhibition of the Korean Pavilion at the 1995 Venice Biennale.

PNC Gallery is pleased to present Hoon Kwak: Recent Works , on view from August 18 through October 8, 2026. The exhibition brings together works from the final phase of Kwak’s Halaayt series, developed since 2019, alongside a new group of works on paper that signal the beginning of a new body of work. Bringing the conclusion of one series into dialogue with the emergence of another, the exhibition captures a moment of transition in the artist’s practice while revealing the themes that have persisted throughout his career.

Begun in 2019, the Halaayt series evokes an imagined world of ancient communities, whale worship, and ritual. Through these mythic scenes, Kwak explores humanity’s collective memory and its enduring relationship with nature, myth, and civilization. The series has become one of the central strands of his recent painting, extending concerns with human civilization and collective memory that have been present in his work since the 1970s.

The works presented in this exhibition belong to the final phase of Halaayt and appear increasingly lucid and abstract. Above opaque, bronze-toned seas that resemble rocky terrain, open fields of air emerge through transparent layers of paint. White X-shaped forms expose the canvas beneath, creating a tension between image and matter, presence and disappearance. These paintings reveal the mature pictorial sensibility Kwak has developed over decades of artistic practice.

During the same period, PNC Gallery will present Kwak’s early works from the 1970s and 1980s in the Spotlight section of Frieze Seoul 2026 . Seen together with the gallery exhibition, these works offer an opportunity to consider how the signs, materiality, memory, and ritual imagery that emerged in Kwak’s early practice have evolved and resurfaced over several decades. Encountering his early and recent works concurrently across two venues in Seoul offers a rare opportunity to view Kwak’s practice as a continuous artistic trajectory unfolding over time.