회화적 즐거움, Oil on canvas, 112.1 x 145.5cm, 2025, Courtesy of the EM Gallery
EM Gallery presents Flesh on Canvas, a solo exhibition by Korean artist Jang Seung Keun, on view from March 27 to May 4, 2025. Featuring a selection of more than ten new paintings, the exhibition explores the artist’s distinctive visual language in which lines, forms, and colors shift continuously across the canvas, resisting fixed meaning and inviting a fluid, sensorial experience.
Rather than replicating recognizable objects, Jang's paintings evoke fleeting afterimages and subtle sensations. Shapes appear, dissolve, and reconfigure, transforming the surface into a space of movement rather than containment. Each work begins with a quick sketch drawn from daily life, which Jang then layers with intuitive strokes and washes of color. The result is a pictorial field where the form is never static but always in the process of becoming.
그림을 그리는 사람, Oil, Conte on canvas, 227.3 x 181.8cm, 2024, Courtesy of the EM Gallery
This approach reflects Jang's fundamental belief in the impermanence of perception and meaning. His paintings are less about capturing a moment and more about registering its passage. Through this, he fosters a flexible mode of visual storytelling—one where ambiguity is embraced and interpretation remains open. Viewers are encouraged to engage with the works emotionally rather than intellectually, forming personal narratives as they encounter the shifting compositions.
The title Flesh on Canvas encapsulates Jang’s desire to bring painting closer to the tactile and the human. The exhibition emphasizes the porous boundary between artwork and viewer, proposing that painting can function like skin—a living membrane that holds but does not isolate, that breathes and absorbs rather than repels. This metaphor underlines the artist’s intent to create paintings that do not stand aloof but instead reach out, quietly humorous and deeply human.
콜라텍 부루스, Oil on canvas, 53 x 45.5cm, 2024, Courtesy of the EM Gallery
His canvases reject grandiosity or solemn isolation. Instead, they offer scenes of gentle movement and familiar ambiguity, drawing viewers into a dynamic space where humor, discomfort, and recognition coexist. Within these works, the line is not just a boundary but a connector—an element that dissolves edges, restructures forms and invites continuous reconsideration.
In a world increasingly shaped by fragmentation and disconnection, Jang Seung Keun’s work asks what it means to make contact between artist and viewer, memory and presence, and sensation and interpretation. Flesh on Canvas ultimately reveals painting as a language still capable of surprise, vulnerability, and intimacy.
The exhibition's opening marks an important moment in the artist’s evolving practice. Through these works, Jang sketches out the contours of a new artistic vocabulary—one rooted in gesture and openness, in the resonance of everyday impressions transformed through paint.
Sayart / Maria Kim, sayart2022@gmail.com
회화적 즐거움, Oil on canvas, 112.1 x 145.5cm, 2025, Courtesy of the EM Gallery
EM Gallery presents Flesh on Canvas, a solo exhibition by Korean artist Jang Seung Keun, on view from March 27 to May 4, 2025. Featuring a selection of more than ten new paintings, the exhibition explores the artist’s distinctive visual language in which lines, forms, and colors shift continuously across the canvas, resisting fixed meaning and inviting a fluid, sensorial experience.
Rather than replicating recognizable objects, Jang's paintings evoke fleeting afterimages and subtle sensations. Shapes appear, dissolve, and reconfigure, transforming the surface into a space of movement rather than containment. Each work begins with a quick sketch drawn from daily life, which Jang then layers with intuitive strokes and washes of color. The result is a pictorial field where the form is never static but always in the process of becoming.
그림을 그리는 사람, Oil, Conte on canvas, 227.3 x 181.8cm, 2024, Courtesy of the EM Gallery
This approach reflects Jang's fundamental belief in the impermanence of perception and meaning. His paintings are less about capturing a moment and more about registering its passage. Through this, he fosters a flexible mode of visual storytelling—one where ambiguity is embraced and interpretation remains open. Viewers are encouraged to engage with the works emotionally rather than intellectually, forming personal narratives as they encounter the shifting compositions.
The title Flesh on Canvas encapsulates Jang’s desire to bring painting closer to the tactile and the human. The exhibition emphasizes the porous boundary between artwork and viewer, proposing that painting can function like skin—a living membrane that holds but does not isolate, that breathes and absorbs rather than repels. This metaphor underlines the artist’s intent to create paintings that do not stand aloof but instead reach out, quietly humorous and deeply human.
콜라텍 부루스, Oil on canvas, 53 x 45.5cm, 2024, Courtesy of the EM Gallery
His canvases reject grandiosity or solemn isolation. Instead, they offer scenes of gentle movement and familiar ambiguity, drawing viewers into a dynamic space where humor, discomfort, and recognition coexist. Within these works, the line is not just a boundary but a connector—an element that dissolves edges, restructures forms and invites continuous reconsideration.
In a world increasingly shaped by fragmentation and disconnection, Jang Seung Keun’s work asks what it means to make contact between artist and viewer, memory and presence, and sensation and interpretation. Flesh on Canvas ultimately reveals painting as a language still capable of surprise, vulnerability, and intimacy.
The exhibition's opening marks an important moment in the artist’s evolving practice. Through these works, Jang sketches out the contours of a new artistic vocabulary—one rooted in gesture and openness, in the resonance of everyday impressions transformed through paint.
