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Stains lingering on quiet white. Layers of white gently brushing over them. For Kim Jung Baek, white is never just a color. It is discipline and erasure, focus and acceptance—a process of emptying through repeated gestures of painting and covering.
In this new body of work, color is more thoroughly excluded than ever. Coffee-stained canvases are overlaid with gesso, adding depth while suppressing form. This is not a pursuit of visual minimalism alone, but an act of inner training—a movement toward freedom from chaos, as the artist describes. Each surface, seemingly still and white, records the tension between repetition and restraint, imperfection and persistence.
His whites are never singular. The scent of coffee beneath, the weight of white above, and the textures formed by countless brushstrokes—all speak of temperature, emotion, and time suspended within the canvas. These are not blank surfaces; they are quiet fields of memory and transformation.
For Kim, white is not a symbol, but a path inward—and outward again. The act of painting becomes a cycle of revealing and concealing, of remembering and forgetting. In this exhibition, that cycle emerges with stark clarity.
Emptiness is not absence. It is intention—a stillness where thought and sensation meet. This exhibition becomes a quiet meditation, where the sense of emptiness gently moves through the surface of each work.
In this new body of work, color is more thoroughly excluded than ever. Coffee-stained canvases are overlaid with gesso, adding depth while suppressing form. This is not a pursuit of visual minimalism alone, but an act of inner training—a movement toward freedom from chaos, as the artist describes. Each surface, seemingly still and white, records the tension between repetition and restraint, imperfection and persistence.
His whites are never singular. The scent of coffee beneath, the weight of white above, and the textures formed by countless brushstrokes—all speak of temperature, emotion, and time suspended within the canvas. These are not blank surfaces; they are quiet fields of memory and transformation.
For Kim, white is not a symbol, but a path inward—and outward again. The act of painting becomes a cycle of revealing and concealing, of remembering and forgetting. In this exhibition, that cycle emerges with stark clarity.
Emptiness is not absence. It is intention—a stillness where thought and sensation meet. This exhibition becomes a quiet meditation, where the sense of emptiness gently moves through the surface of each work.