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Gaze That Lingered on Me

Name: Gaze That Lingered on Me
Start: 2026-08-06
End: 2026-08-27
Location: Hidden M Gallery

Free · Gangnam-gu Hidden M Gallery

Dates: Aug 6 ~ Aug 27
Venue: Hidden M Gallery
Area: Seoul Gangnam-gu
Price: Free
Enquiries: 02-539-2346

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About this event

Hidden M Gallery is holding a three-person exhibition, <Gaze That Lingered on Me>, by artists Lee Ji-woo, Hong Soo-jung, and Hwang Ho-seok from August 6 to August 27. This exhibition illuminates what it means to look at a single subject for a long time, and how that gaze shapes senses and memories to build a new world within the language of painting. Although the three artists look at different subjects such as landscapes, life, and daily life, their works do not merely reproduce the visible world. Rather, they build up emotions, time, and traces of existence that are finally revealed where the gaze lingered, making us perceive the familiar world anew. We live our lives looking at countless scenes every day. However, not all landscapes remain with the same depth within us. Some scenes pass by, while others linger in our hearts for a long time and become part of life. This is not due to visible shapes, but because the light, air, emotions, time, and hard-to-explain senses of that moment accumulate together. Gazing does not merely stay as an act of looking at a subject. Some senses guide the gaze, and some scenes remain for a long time before finally leaving as a memory and emotion. What we keep in our hearts may not be the landscape that flashed before our eyes, but a world newly formed within the time the gaze lingered. <Gaze That Lingered on Me> focuses on the persistence of this gaze. Painting is not a medium that simply transfers reality before our eyes, but a language that reconstructs the time and emotions the gaze passed through. The colors, lines, textures, and traces left on the canvas are not mere expressions, but the result of accumulated time of looking, and within them, the relationship the artist has maintained with the world is quietly permeated. Although the three artists use different formative languages, they all bring back senses that lingered long with them into the present through painting. Their works show the depth of sensation that continues to remain even after the gaze has passed, rather than explaining a single scene. Lee Ji-woo's paintings do not start from the moment of looking at a landscape, but from the process of re-reading the senses of a day that lingered long. However, what the artist captures on the canvas is not the specific location or form of a landscape. Everyday scenes such as the book read yesterday by the bedside, a chair at noon, a door with blue patterns carved by summer light, a summer evening window, a lemon beside a script book between one and ten o'clock, cloud shadows, and candle wax remain as a single sense and memory through a long-lingering gaze. A landscape looked at for a long time suddenly begins to take on expressions like a face, and the artist calls the subtle nuance of that emotion 'complexion' (nachbit). Emotions such as loneliness, excitement, and affection are condensed into layers of light and color, remaining in memory and reappearing as a single expression on the canvas. The landscape is no longer an external subject, but a contact point of sensation where oneself and the world meet. The artist builds heavy-particle pigments, oil, and paints on top, revealing the process of daily senses accumulating as materiality. Some things stay on the screen, while others graze past, leaving grooves and traces. The thickness and density of those irregularities become a layer created by the accumulation of past time and memories. Amidst the process of building and erasing, layers are formed like a memory, and traces left by pressure and friction create the texture of emotion. This repetition is not just a formative effect, but resembles the structural flow of time where unrecorded daily senses accumulate and transform. It is a process of re-reading a day that was too close to easily pass by, rather than recording special events. Senses not written in a diary and not spoken out loud pile up layer upon layer on the canvas to become a landscape. The 'complexion' formed this way is not a portrait of a specific person, but another portrait where the world encountered through the landscape and one's inner self intersect. The artist's gaze does not stop at looking at the landscape, but reads the emotions of existence permeated within it, leading us to look at the world a bit more deeply. Hong Soo-jung views life as a grand cycle repeating endless creation and extinction. The beautiful color fields unfolding on the canvas are not completed shapes, but thin membranes briefly wrapping the vitality of life constantly churning underneath. The artist first leaves a red acrylic layer on the canvas. It is the primordial pulse of life and the trace of energy boiling deep inside the human interior. Afterward, she thickly covers it with calmly toned oil paint to temporarily hide the primordial energy of life. However, the energy latent beneath the canvas does not disappear, waiting for the moment to reveal itself again. Before the oil paint hardens, the artist digs and scrapes the canvas with a needle. This act is not merely a formative technique, but a gesture to bring hidden vitality back out into the world and a healing process of facing wounds head-on without avoidance. Through the scraped open crevices, the red color layer begins to breathe again, and the canvas finally gains respiration. Afterward, the countless overlapping thin lines do not fill the wounds left by the needle, but create a new flow of life. The massive density formed by the organic intertwining of rough and delicate lines resembles cosmic waves, showing the cycle where life endlessly generates and recovers. Hong Soo-jung's paintings reveal senses, energy, and the unseen flow of life before they are shaped. The artist's gaze expands beyond looking at a subject to sensing the latent movement and power of existence within it. Her paintings are not spaces to hide wounds, but a field recording the time when life blooms again. Hwang Ho-seok looks long at daily life which is closest and thus easily passed by. Familiar times such as family, friends, repeating days, and commuting between the studio and home seem to flow without special events, but within the artist's gaze, they transform into the most precious records of life. In an era where countless images are rapidly consumed, we face countless scenes a day, but most disappear without being remembered. The artist selects scenes that lingered long in his heart among these disappearing moments and re-examines the time and emotions they hold within painting. Scenes recorded in photographs slowly regain respiration through painting. The canvas permeates the air, emotion, and temperature of relationships of that moment rather than a specific event. A day that passed by as if it were nothing acquires a new density of time through painting, and ordinary objects and landscapes settle as important memories making up life. What the artist wants to catch is not a special moment, but things we couldn't see because they were too close. His work shows how familiar everyday scenes remain in our memories and persist as a single image even after time passes. His gaze does not make ordinary daily life unfamiliar, but allows us to rediscover the preciousness hidden within familiarity. Thus, it acts not as a medium recording lost time, but as a memory device returning the fading senses of life to the present. The three artists look at different worlds, but their gazes ultimately meet at a single point. A long-lingering gaze does not consume the subject. It is a process of looking slowly to understand the world and discovering the emotions, life, and time hidden within it. Lee Ji-woo discovers human expressions in landscapes, Hong Soo-jung reveals the respiration of life amidst wounds, and Hwang Ho-seok draws out the deepest meaning of life from ordinary daily life. Their paintings are all the result of the worlds each looked at for a long time, regenerated through time and sensation, and are landscapes of sensation appearing only where the gaze has lingered. <Gaze That Lingered on Me> goes beyond being an exhibition showing the worlds looked at by three artists. This exhibition asks anew what we live looking at, and what lingers long within us to become part of life. The time spent lingering in front of the work becomes a time to quietly reflect on one's own life. The traces of the gaze left by the three artists on the canvas will quietly shake the viewer's memories and senses, leading them to face the landscapes, relationships, and moments of daily life they passed by with a new perspective.

Location

Gangnam-gu Hidden M Gallery

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