ASIA WEEK NEW YORK EXHIBITION
In Transit, In Formation
March 5 – April 18, 2026
Opening Reception: Wednesday, March 4, 6-8pm (kindly RSVP)
This exhibition brings together four artists—Kakyoung Lee, Buhm Hong, Hong Seon Jang, and Sun You—whose practices unfold between movement and becoming. Transit functions as a condition of passage through time, labor, and cultural frameworks, while formation describes processes through which forms and identities take shape without closure. Working across sculpture, installation, animation, and video, the artists operate within these open-ended conditions, occupying a dual state: always en route, and at the same time, becoming something else.
These four artists share more than a generational proximity. Based in New York and shaped by contemporary Korean diasporic conditions, they have remained in ongoing dialogue for over a decade—observing one another’s practices, exchanging questions, and developing their work independently, yet in close awareness of one another. The exhibition emerges from a sustained familiarity, where distinct practices have evolved over time along parallel trajectories.
For Kakyoung Lee, movement is neither spectacle nor singular event, but a persistent rhythm of everyday life. Travel becomes a way of understanding how bodies move through the world—physically, emotionally, and socially. In multichannel animations such as Tourists, F Train, and the Palgongsan Series, these repeated motions accumulate into fragile records of lived experience. Here, identity is not something reached at the end of a journey, but something gradually formed through movement itself.
Buhm Hong approaches transit through memory and space, treating place not as a fixed location but as a constellation of memories that continually reconnect and reorganize. His video works construct imagined architectures from fragments of personal recollection, where spaces are summoned by light and woven into new relationships. In installations such as Memory Weeds, memory is no longer an individual narrative but a growing cluster, like a forest. These works remain in formation, where memory continues to expand over time rather than reaching completion.
In the work of Hong Seon Jang, movement takes on a distinctly structural form. Across Ship of Fools and Keys to the Moon and Back, materials are organized around two contrasting conditions of immigrant life—one grounded in the labor of survival, the other suspended in longing for what remains out of reach. One work gathers the debris and labor of everyday immigrant life; the other redirects that accumulation into an impossible vertical trajectory. Seen side by side, the installations ask what it means to build a life in motion within systems that simultaneously invite and withhold belonging.
Working at an intimate scale, Sun You centers her practice on restraint and proximity. Using small, lightweight materials—polymer clay, wire, magnets, beads, and found tools—she assembles provisional structures that subtly shift with each installation. Developed across multiple locations and sustained by gravity, chance, and delicate balance, her sculptures refuse monumentality, favoring intimacy and adaptability instead. Formation here is an ongoing stance grounded in impermanence, interdependence, and becoming.
Together, these practices articulate a shared condition—one in which movement does not seek arrival, and formation remains open, provisional, and ongoing.
To learn more, click here.
ONGOING INSTALLATION
Ik-Joong Kang, Hangeul Wall: Things I Love to Talk About, 2024, 20,000 Hangeul tiles (mixed media on wood: 3×3 inches each), approximately 26 x 72 ft (8 x 22 meters)
Hangeul Wall: Things I Love to Talk About
Atrium
The Hangeul Wall, measuring 26 x 72 feet (8 x 22 meters) and composed of 20,000 Hangeul tiles, connects the wisdom and experiences of global citizens. Developed in collaboration with LG CNS, KCCNY launched a website in May 2024, enabling people worldwide to create their own artworks using the site’s translation and coloring functions under the theme “Things I Love to Talk About.” The website attracted over 8.2 million visits from more than 50 countries and received 7,000 artwork submissions within two months. From these, 1,000 pieces were selected through public online voting and artist review, culminating in this monumental installation.
The Hangeul Wall stands as a symbol of the rich cultural heritage of Hangeul and the universal freedom of expression, serving as a testament to our shared human narratives. Traditionally, walls are seen as barriers that divide and separate; however, the Hangeul Wall represents a different kind of structure—a wall of peace and unity. It transcends the conventional notion of separation to become a canvas of connection and harmony.
To learn more, click here.
