김지훈 작가 개인전 《From Emotion: Landscapes of Jeju》 2026.06.15-12.31
Suppoment Gallery / 2026-06-18
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“Every form begins with a stone, but ends with a memory."
Born and based in Jeju, Kim Jihoon transforms the island’s stone walls, landscapes, and memories into a distinctive language of abstraction. Using actual Jeju stone powder and delicately layered color, he creates paintings that move beyond representation, evoking the emotional traces of place, time, and human connection. His works are not depictions of nature, but landscapes remembered through feeling.
Kim Jihoon's paintings are rooted in the landscape of Jeju, yet they move far beyond representation.
Born and based on the island, the artist draws inspiration from Jeju's stone walls, volcanic terrain, and the memories embedded within everyday life. Rather than depicting these elements directly, he reduces them to simplified forms and carefully balanced compositions that occupy the space between landscape and abstraction.
The irregular shapes that appear throughout his work originate from stones. For Kim, however, stone is never merely a physical object. It becomes a metaphor for people—individual yet interconnected, distinct yet dependent on one another. Much like the stone walls that define Jeju's landscape, his compositions are built through relationships between forms, creating a quiet sense of balance and coexistence.
Memory is equally important to the artist's practice. The exhibition Young Man reflects recollections of childhood summers spent with his grandmother, who made traditional Korean garments. The soft yet luminous palette found throughout the works echoes those early visual memories. Color functions not as description, but as emotion—carrying traces of atmosphere, sensation, and time.
Materiality grounds these memories in place. Kim incorporates actual Jeju stone powder into the surface of the canvas, allowing the island itself to become part of the work. The resulting texture lends physical depth while reinforcing the connection between landscape and lived experience.
While his paintings employ the visual language of contemporary abstraction, they remain deeply connected to a distinctly Korean sensibility. Spacious compositions, restrained rhythms, and an appreciation for silence and balance invite prolonged viewing rather than immediate consumption.
The recurring title From Emotion encapsulates the essence of Kim's practice. His paintings are not records of a particular place, but reflections of how a place continues to exist through memory. In these works, landscape is transformed into an emotional terrain—one shaped by time, material, and human experience.
