Sound of Silence: Painting Forest: Heryun Kim

The Sound of Silence, Piercing Through Nature and History

Wooson Gallery is pleased to present two solo exhibitions by artist Heryun Kim, "The Sound of Silence: Painting Forest" and "The Sound of Silence: Language of Stars," at its Seoul and Daegu spaces from August 28 to October 25, 2025. The solo exhibitions encompass the artist's original painting world, which she has been building for over a decade while living between Berlin and Korea, and introduce her world that crosses nature and history, tradition and modernity. The artist has long been exploring cultural boundaries and layers of time, and through this exhibition, she unfolds the sounds of life echoing in silence, the language of forms that bridge ancient and modern times, and the possibilities of sculpture where East and West meet. The quiet contemplation of the Berlin forest, the primordial vitality of the hemisphere's petroglyphs, and the material memory of traditional culture in the form of hanbok(Korean traditional clothes) are presented in various forms, including paintings, installations, and textile objects.

For Kim, 'silence' is not just stillness, but the true breath of nature and art that can only be heard when the noise of civilization is removed. The exhibition "Painting Forest" at Wooson Gallery Seoul presents a textile objet <Mother Mobile>, a long-term project that deconstructs and reconstructs traditional hanbok and translates it into a universal sculptural language, and <Hunminjeongum>, a series of textile paintings using ink and wool. The space is organized as a contemporary "forest" that combines painterly language and installation sensibilities to invite deep reflection on the relationship between nature, humans, and historical memory. The exhibition Language of Stars at Wooson Gallery Daegu similarly centers on the Sound of Silence series, creating a deep, serene space reminiscent of a forest. In addition, the <Whales of Bangudae> series, which originates from the images of whales in hemispheric petroglyphs, and a series of works centered around Cutting Letters, which demonstrate the artist's unique figurative language of nature and time, will be presented to showcase Kim's aesthetic that intersects ancient script with contemporary sculpture. The space offers a grand yet delicate experience that immerses the viewer in a deep journey that transcends time and space.

Vibrant Painting, Echoing Through Silence

"When I'm painting all day in my studio in Berlin, in the middle of a dense forest, I'm really listening to the sound of silence. It's not a conversation, so it's not a human voice, and it's not the dusty chatter in my head, but it's a magnificent and very quiet sound that seems to be silent, but is actually the sound of nature at its greatest. The sounds of nature, which can only be heard when human language and the machinery of civilization are silenced, include the sky, clouds, wind, and stars, as well as the sounds of true works of art." – Heryun Kim

The central concept of the exhibition, Sound of Silence, a painting of the silence experienced in the Berlin forest, will be on display at both the Seoul and Daegu venues. Each painting conveys the changing emotions of color like the changing seasons, and embodies the cyclicality and vitality of nature through fluid brushstrokes and repeated layers of paint. Kim does not simply reproduce the surface of nature. Rather, she persistently gazes at the texture of the forest, structuring the colors themselves and attempting to weave time through its surface. Although his paintings contain clear shapes, it is not easy to determine whether they are trees or clouds as one follows the flow of color and brushstrokes. Different layers of time repeatedly meet and diverge, creating a fluid pictorial space that seems to expand and contract. Her work is more than just landscape painting, it is an organic way of life that connects and re-differentiates nature and humans. The finished form and the process of deconstructing it exist simultaneously, and the possibilities opened up by the tension between union and separation are endlessly explored.

A Forest of Fibers Weaving the Traditions and Modern

Alongside Sound of silence, <Mother Mobile>, a series of textile objects deconstructed and reconstructed from traditional hanbok, is suspended in midair and moves across the exhibition space. The flow of lines, cotton, and color along the textile's grain is as organic as the grain of a forest tree, and the mobiles, which change shape with the wind, move freely between fixed and fluid, traditional and contemporary. The artist develops complex thoughts by deconstructing the cultural memories engraved on the traditional garment of hanbok into material and sculptural layers and weaving them back into a sculptural language. Kim's work starts with specific forms, but gradually expands into universal and inclusive ideas. Here, textiles are not just decorative materials, but products of sensations and touches passed down through generations. The flow of lines, cotton, and colors that follow the grain of the fabric is as organic as the grain of a forest tree, and the mobile-like objects suspended in mid-air emphasize the fluidity of lightness and weight, fixity and fluidity, and change shape according to the gaze. Mother Mobile reveals that tradition is not a fixed past, but a living structure in the present that is constantly transformed and reinterpreted.

Whales of Bangudae, Swimming Across the Earth

<Whales of Bangudae> is a large-scale work inspired by the whale figures of the Bangudae petroglyphs in Ulsan, Korea, discovered in 1971. Each whale is painted as a solo portrait on a giant vertical screen, and the work is mounted so high that it soars toward the sky, just like the whales on the Bangudae rock wall. The artist places the canvas on the ground and dips a large paintbrush in thick ink to outline the whales, filling in the spaces between the ink lines with light from the sky and light from the sea.

More than just a reproduction of the whale's form, the artist captures the life energy that flows across the sky and ocean, creating a dynamic that extends beyond the canvas. The whales gaze at each other in the exhibition space, connecting and suspended high above, the figures rethink the boundaries between man and nature.

"...In the paintings of whales in both hemispheres, they are far more impressive ascending toward the sky than as they swim horizontally across the ocean. Even though we hunt them and eat their flesh, we know that our own bodies are also finite, so it seems that man's highest emotion for whales is expressed in vertical compositions that point skyward. [...] When the black ink line is drawn, I think of the whale, I think of the rocks, and then I think of them. When the bleeding stops, I apply blue water-based paint between the lines. This color, which I don't know if it is sea or sky, is a heavenly color that has been granted not only to humans but also to whales."

- Excerpted from 『Art and Cryptography – Whales of Bangudae』, Heryun Kim

Characters Formed by Shape 

In <Hunminjeongum>, the artist deconstructs the basic structure of Korean consonants and vowels into independent sculptural elements, extending the geometric order of the characters into the pictorial space by combining the traditional materials of ink and wool. This maximizes the visual energy of the characters by combining the strong contrast created by the black ink lines with the soft texture of the wool. Of particular note is the approach to the characters as living forms rather than mere symbols. In this modern interpretation of the creative principle of the Korean alphabet, which is based on the articulatory organs of the lips, tongue, and throat, letters are no longer symbols to be read, but living forms and dancing images. This opens up new aesthetic possibilities at the intersection of language and art. In the same vein, Cutting Letters is a series of works in which Kim explores the origins of letters and forms, dealing with the deconstruction and rebirth of symbols. Starting from the act of 'cutting letters' as the title suggests, she removes the meaning or pronunciation function inherent in the letters and reconstructs them into a visual form. 

For Kim, archaeological thinking is the starting point for her creative process. "Archaeology tells us about the origins of art and allows us to deduce the consciousness of shaping," she says, and her series <Cutting Letters: Sumer> brings the "spirit of form" found in ancient artifacts such as clay tablets into a contemporary context. More than just an experiment with letters, it is an exploration of the fundamental desires that humans have communicated through symbols, and a rediscovery of the shaping rituals that have been passed down through the layers of civilization. By deconstructing the most everyday symbols of letters, the artist reveals the primal vitality of form and, in doing so, suggests how art can approach the essence of existence. It is a work that opens up new aesthetic possibilities at the intersection of language and art, while expressing the sculptural potential of letters themselves in a contemporary visual language.

Kim's paintings, which naturally connect the present we live in with the history of the past, multiply at the boundary between past and present, expanding the exhibition space into a new time and space. This exhibition will visualize the artist's painterly transitions, her in-depth thoughts on nature, history, tradition, and modernity, and showcase the new horizons of her painting world.