Artist: Hoon Kwak

PNC Gallery presents Hoon Kwak: Recent Works. The exhibition brings together the final works from the Halaayt series, which Kwak has developed since 2019, with new drawings from an emerging series, capturing a transitional moment as one body of work comes to a close and another begins to take shape.

The final works of the Halaayt series have become increasingly open and lucid. Translucent layers of acrylic paint and traces of water create a tension between image and material, presence and disappearance, revealing the mature painterly sensibility distinctive to Kwak’s practice.

In the drawings from his new series, Kwak returns to oil, pencil, and paper collage, beginning once again with the X-shaped motif that has recurred throughout his practice since his early works. Through it, he explores new formal possibilities. Rather than constituting a fully resolved series, these works reflect a process of experimentation and contemplation that points toward paintings yet to come.

Seen alongside Kwak’s works from the 1970s and 1980s presented concurrently by PNC Gallery in Frieze Seoul 2026 Spotlight, the exhibition offers an opportunity to trace how the signs, memories, and shamanic imagery of his early practice have transformed and resurfaced over several decades.