Artists: Areum Yang - Hwi Hahm

“Thinking of That Room” brings together new paintings by Hwi Hahm and Areum Yang, two artists whose practices approach the complexities of interior life from divergent yet complementary directions. Both painters turn to the studio as a site of reflection and resistance — a space where the mind’s turbulence is translated into image and form.

For Hahm, painting is a process of excavation. His recent works expand upon a lineage of modernist inquiry, borrowing visual cues from artists such as Emil Nolde and Max Beckmann while filtering them through his own distinct geometry. Once guided by a logic of restraint, Hahm’s evolving vocabulary now reveals a newfound fluidity — bold lines and angular systems give way to subtle figuration and atmospheric play. His compositions balance precision with uncertainty, evoking the tension between structure and emotion, self and world.

In contrast, Areum Yang situates her practice within the realm of representation, constructing vivid domestic scenes charged with psychological and cultural resonance. Her interiors, animated by figures, pets, and familiar furnishings, probe the rituals and gestures that shape social life. Drawing on instincts honed through habit and improvisation, Yang employs collage, fabric, and painterly layering to reanimate discarded materials and memories. The results are textured tableaux that oscillate between intimacy and estrangement, capturing the emotional weight of everyday experience.

Together, Hahm and Yang investigate the thresholds of the interior — mental, spatial, and pictorial. Thinking of That Room becomes both a reflection on confinement and a celebration of creative persistence: how artists meet the world from within their own four walls.