Biography
전희경. Jeon Heekyoung (b.1981)
홍익대학교 회화과와 동 대학원을 졸업하고, 2006년 첫 개인전을 시작으로 20차례의 개인전과 150회 이상의 국내외 그룹전에 꾸준히 참여하면서
탄탄하고 독자적인 조형언어를 구축해왔다. 2013년 겸재정선미술관 ‘내일의
작가’ 대상을 수상했고, 분다눈미술관(호주), 관두미술관(대만), 타이동미술관(대만)을
비롯하여 최근의 예술곶_산양(제주)에 이르기까지 다양한 국내외 레지던스에 참여하는 등 국제무대로 나아가며 전시를 활발하게 이어나가고 있다. 또한 국립현대미술관 미술은행, 겸재정선미술관 등 다수의 미술관 및
공공기관을 비롯하여 작품의 소장처가 넓어지고 있다. 전희경은 빛, 바람, 기후 등 유기적 자연 요소로부터 해체된 형태들과 색채의 흐름이 뒤섞인 세계를 이끌어내고 추상적 회화로 표현한다. 그는 회화가 그 자체로 하나의 완결된 작품인 동시에 물리적 공간에서 경험되는 회화 설치를 통해 여러 점의 회화가
연속하는 구조 사이에서 내러티브를 획득하는 방식을 모색한다.
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전희경은 최근 어느 한 인터뷰에서 자신을 “파란색 같은 사람” 이라고 소개했다.
“물 같이 시원하고 자유롭게 사는 것을 꿈꾸지만 막상 바다의 심해 같은 데에 가라앉아 있는 사람”이라고.
이어서 삶에서 가장 관심이 많은 단어가 무엇이냐는 질문에 대한 대답도 퍽 흥미롭다.
그는 “밸런스”라고 말했는데, 이는 마치 자신이 그려내는 양극단 사이에서 자기 자신의 실존을 유지하기 위한 조용한 투쟁 같아 보인다.
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Interview
[JEJU UNESCO ART PROJECT] Interview - 전희경
2019 경기문화재단 경기창작센터 아티스트 인터뷰
https://tv.naver.com/v/9906978
2021 정서진아트큐브 기획전시 I '공기의 모양 The Shape of Air' | Art Talk in Art Cube | #3 전희경작가
전희경의 작품은 전통적인 한국 산수화의 영감을 받아 현대적인 추상미술 스타일로 형태를 재해석한다.
전희경이 “산수화(山水畵)”를 말할 때, 산(山)과 물(水)의 경치를 그린 작품을 가리키기도 하지만,
빛, 바람, 기후 등이 색채로 뒤섞인 관념적인 개념을 표현하기 위해 “풍경화”와 다른 지점의 단어로서 산수화를 사용하고 있기도 하다.
이 산수화는 전통과 현대, 추상과 실재, 감정과 현실을 결합하여 독특하고 미묘하게 아름다운 작가 내면의 풍경을 시각화한다.
작가의 말을 옮기면 “산과 물, 구름과 안개, 폭포와 파도 등의 자연의 이미지를 가지고 색과 터치, 물감의 물성 등을 나만의 조형 요소로 표현” 한다.
그 작품 속 독특한 조형 요소는 다채로운 색채와 획의 자유로움으로 대표된다.
초기작으로 분류되는 2009년부터 2013년 작까지는 “산과 물, 구름과 안개, 폭포와 파도”를 직관적으로 인지할 수 있는 요소들이 드러나지만,
2015년 이후부터 현재까지의 작업은 추상표현주의 작품으로만 읽힐 정도의 감각적 요소들이 색과 획으로만 표현된다.
작업이 변함에 따라 심리적 풍경에 점점 더 천착하게 되면서,
구상적 요소를 점점 비워내는 방식은 윌렘 드 쿠닝(Willem de Kooning)이 말한 “많은 작가가 나이가 들수록 점점 단순해지는 것 같다” 라는 생각과 궤를 같이 하는 듯 보인다.
단순하기와 비워내기가 내공이 필요한 일임은 동서양을 막론해 흰 캔버스를 채워내야 하는 모든 작가가 공유하고 공감할 수 있는 사실인 모양이다.
●Heekyoung Jeon and her Linked with you (Bulmajchum) with Jeju’s nature 中, Nayun Lee (Art critic, independent curator)
Artist CV
전희경 Jeon Heekyoung (b.1981)
Education
2009 M.F.A Fine Art Painting, Hong-ik University, Seoul, Korea
2005 B.F.A Fine Art Painting, Hong-ik University, Seoul, Korea
Selected Solo Show
2026 What the Green withheld, Musesseum gallery, Ulsan, Korea
2025 Surface of Water; On the Way to Depth, Incheon Art Platform G3, Incheon
2025 Soundings of Blue, SARAHCROWN, NYC, USA
2024 Richer Viridian, JJ gallery, Seoul, Korea
2022 Moments of Scenery, Jongno Tower, Seoul, Korea
2021 Into the Blue, Philosopher's Stone, Seoul, Korea
2018 As Wind Brushed the Clouds Away, Shinhan gallery, Seoul, Korea
Selected Group Show
2025
Whispers of The Mud, Salt Museum, Shinan, Korea
Inner Frame, Hidden M gallery, Seoul, Korea
Echoes of Summer, Lina gallery, Busa, Korea
Sedimented Material, Maf gallery, Seoul, Korea
When the Scenery Whispers, Was gallery, Seoul, Korea
2024
I am Sailing, Gallery Sedin, Seoul, Korea
Timeless Art Passion at Heart, Four Seasons Hotel, Seoul, Korea
San Serriffe, OF, Seoul, Korea
D island Order, Artspace IAa, JeJu, Korea
2023
Message from the village office, Art Lab Sanyang, JeJu, Korea
3650 storage/ Interview, Seoul Museum, Seoul, Korea
2022
Edited Landscape, Gana Busan, Busan, Korea
Bird Does Not Exist, Space Imsi, Incheon, Korea
language of our own, Musesseum Gallery, Ulsan,
2021
MANIFOLD: MANUAL, Seoul Arts Center Hangaram Design Museum, Seoul, Korea
World heritage festival 'Jeju Volcanic Island and Lava Tubes' Art Project,Geomunoreum Lava Jeju
Total Support, Total Museum, Seoul, Korea
Shape of Air, Jeongsejin Art Cube, Incheon, Korea
2020
Iktsuarpok, SEMA, Seoul, Korea
OP.23 NO.8 In A FLAT MAJOR,OF, Seoul, Korea
Selected Residency Program
2025 Art Naru, Incheon, Korea
2025 Art like Salt, Sinan, Korea
2023 Art Lab Sanyang, Jeju, Korea
2017-2019 Gyounggi Creation Center, Ansan, Korea
2013 Guandu Residency Program, Guandu Museum of Fine Art, Taipei, Taiwan
2012 Taitung Art Museum AIR, Taitung, Taiwan
2011'Open to You', Openspace Bae, Busan, korea
Selected Award
2021-2023 MetLife Korea Foundation Awarded, Seoul Korea
2019-2021 Korea Arts Managment Service, Grant for Artist Managment (a government agency)
2015 ‘Hollo, Artist!’, Naver Foundation, Seoul Korea
2015 Etro Award, Silver prize, Baekwon Foundation, Seoul Korea
2013 ‘Promising’, Winner, Geomjae Jeongseon Art Museum, Seoul Korea
Selected Art Fair
2026 BAMA / Musesseum gallery, Busan, Korea
2025 Untitled / SARAHCROWN (NYC), Miami, USA (Solo Booth)
2025 KIAF/ SARAHCROWN (NYC), Coex, Seoul, Korea
2024 KIAF/ JJ Gallery, Coex, Seoul, Korea
Selected Collection
2025 HANA Bank Permenent Collection
2018-2019 National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea_ Art Bank
2015-2016 Baekwon Foundation, Seoul Korea
2015 E-land Foundation, Seoul Korea
2014 Geomjae Jeongseon Art Museum, Seoul Korea
2013 Taitung Art Museum, Taitung Taiwan
2012 National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea _ Art Bank
Selected Grants & Awards
2025 International Exchange Grant, Incheon Foundation for Arts & Culture
2025 Solo Exhibition & Creative Practice Grant, Incheon Foundation for Arts & Culture
Publish
2022 Artist Book <Into the Blue>, 237p, ISBN 979-11-980094-1-8
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Heekyoung Jeon and her Linked with you (Bulmajchum) with Jeju’s nature
Nayun Lee (Art critic, independent curator)
Inspired by traditional Korean landscape paintings, Heekyoung Jeon takes the form into the style of a modern abstract art. When Jeon speaks of a “landscape painting (sansu-hwa),” she not only refers to the depiction of mountains (san) and water (su), but the conceptualization of light, wind, and climate through the mixing of colors as well. The particular preference of the word sansu-hwa instead of pungyeong-hwa, a typical word to describe landscape painting, seems appropriate. Jeon’s sansu-hwa visualizes the artist's unique and subtly beautiful inner landscape by combining tradition with the contemporary, and abstraction with the real. In a statement, the artist said, “I took the natural images such as mountains, water, cloud, fog, waterfalls, and sea waves, and have expressed colors, touches, and the physical properties of paints with my unique design elements.”
The formal elements that are unique in Jeon’s work are the heterogeneity of colors and untethered brush strokes. Her early works from 2009 to 2013 show elements that are clearly read as “mountains and water, clouds and fog, waterfalls and waves,” but works from 2015 to the present appear as abstract expressionist, made with only colors and strokes. The way Jeon’s works gradually eliminate figurative elements and show increasing devotion to the psychological landscape is in line with Willem de Kooning's idea that “many artists seem to take on simplicity as they get older.” Regardless of being an Eastern or Western artist, the pursuit of simplicity and the process of emptying is the difficult task common to all painters who face a white canvas.
I would like to note that Jeon Heekyoung's sansu-hwa depicts the climate, not landscape. The artist’s attitude in capturing the ceaseless change of the climate–the flowing clouds, evanescent light, and fluctuating humidity–is similar to that of photography. Yet, it goes a step beyond photography, as the final abstraction is extracted from the artist's physical body and emotions. Jeon shows how photography and painting inevitably differ, and of course, present a visual result that is completely different from photography. The exuding “painterliness” of her work makes one wonder whether her artistic process is finding justification for the medium of painting. It touches upon what Clement Greenberg calls the “painterly abstraction.”
Jeon has established herself as an abstract painter who extracts from the organic natural elements and reinterprets the world of dismantled forms and color. Since 2021, she started to add elements of Jeju, a place of natural beauty. She installed her work in an undisclosed area around Geomun Oreum as part of an outdoor exhibition project for the World Natural Heritage Festival, Jeju Volcanic Island and Lava Tube. A large-scale fabric painting was hung on a tree and countless smaller pieces shaped like fragments of light were scattered around the painting. The work, reminiscent of a lump of light found at the end of a dark Gotjawal or cave, is expressed in colorful colors, eliciting varying experience depending on the ever-changing light, humidity and wind of Jeju's nature. The work departs from simply depicting the climate and is eagerly placed as part of the climate, changing together. This work may be the precursor to her newest work made over the course of eight months during her residency at the 2023 Art Lab Sanyang.
If you are not familiar with her previous works or don’t know that these are sansu-hwa, they appear to be pure abstract paintings without a subject matter. However, for the artist herself, the specificity of location and subject play an important role. The drawing series and the location of the installation presented in Jeju are the most suitable examples to explain this. 396 Drawings (2023) is a site-specific installation created with a total of 396 20cm x 20cm images of nature made with sea sponges on paper. It was installed on one of the walls of the studio where the work has been made.
This process of making this work is quite unique. The artist takes the sea sponge and makes layers of paint marks, which often leads to the technique of automatic drawing and even action painting. Instead of using a brush and filling the surface with intentional marks, paint is added rather unconsciously, using sea sponge which also often mixes up the colors. Using such a painting tool requires a meticulous control of the pressure implemented by the artist, similar to the abstract expressionists. It is in line with the action painting method they employ. The artist explains the process of adding color to the drawing as such.
Apply paint to the paper using a sea sponge (natural sponge). Due to the characteristic of the natural sponge, when soaked with paint, it either spits the paint out onto the paper or completely soaks it in. Add more paint on the sponge and paint on the same piece of paper. The paint that has seeped into the sponge comes out onto the paper by the pressure of the hand, while at the same time, the first and second color becomes mixed up to create a new color. As such, 4-5 colors mixed together in the (deep) pores of the sponge creates more (secondary and tertiary) colors to be applied onto the paper. If the pressure of the hand is too weak, nothing appears, but if the pressure of the hand becomes too strong, even bubbles from the cavernous pores reach the paper. The way colors become a living organism inside the sponge, entangled with each other before pouring out onto the paper, is reminiscent of the universe of trees, moss, vines and piles of stones that I came across in Gotjawal.
According to the artist, her work is not a “drawing” made on a white blank surface, but rather a process of paint pouring and being attached to the physical plane of paper. Of course the artist selects the color of the paint, determines the direction or area to rub, or controls the degree of the hand pressure. Yet, it is clear that much of the process relies on the effect of chance. In the end, this accidental mixing of paint and mark making represent the life, entanglement, and death occurring in nature. In the end, to realize the paradox of being able to draw everything by not drawing anything, the sponge and the artist's hand watch, measure, and cooperate with each other to create the best image possible.
If 396 Drawings is an abstraction with a warm temperature, the Weather of Colors series appears to be comparatively cold. Initially I thought of Weather of Colors as a sketch for 396 Drawings. However, I found little correlation between them in terms of their final appearance in the exhibition, as well as the methods and approach in the making of. Weather of Colors was made by dividing A4-sized paper into 16 sections and adding the colors one by one. Ten minimalistic sheets of such documentation of 16 color patches each were displayed together with a ring. Each color patch is made by layering pigments using a very small amount of water. Collected over the course of one day at the Gotjawal, each sheet with 16 colors reflects the weather, temperature, humidity, and wind of the day. It is the artist’s color diary. Unlike the drawings that emphasize the accidental marks created by the sponge and the artist's movement, this work takes a logical approach as if writing a text. Therefore, instead of displaying each sheet on the wall, it is bound by a ring intended to be flipped through as if you were reading a book. Reading a painting or understanding the artist's intention is difficult, where misunderstandings and slips are bound to occur.
In some ways bold, timid, or logical with mighty emotion, painterly abstraction is born out of a singular brush stroke oscillating between hot and cold alongside the ever-changing climate of Jeju. The by-product of such a process is an installation titled, Untitled. As a continuation of the 2019 work, Leftover Paintings, it was created with leftover materials from the studio. Jeon takes “painting as both a singular work of art, as well as a part of a larger installation that extends into the space.” She explores “ways in which a narrative can be built when multiple paintings connect to build a kind of a structure.” At the open studio of Art Lab Sanyang, Untitled played a crucial role in connecting Jeon’s works including the center piece, 396 Drawings, installed on the wall, the humble presence of Weather of Colors displayed like a description of a work, and the hologram-like fabric installation fluttering in the wind. One is now ready to leave the studio, go out into the courtyard, and face the large-scale outdoor installation piece.
Linked with you is an installation of 9 acrylic paintings measuring 1.45 meters wide and 6 meters tall hung on the outdoor arbor structure at Art Lab Sanyang. It can be understood as an expansion of the outdoor installation shown at the World Heritage Festival. Installed in another site in Jeju, bulmajchum emanates the colors of Jeju in a lively manner, responding to the light and wind of Jeju. The word bulmajchum refers to the use of fire (bul) as an emergency communication device between the islands of Gapado and Marado. Jeon immediately associated this word with the distance and connectedness she has always felt with nature (the forest). Through the work titled, Linked with you, Jeon sends a strong signal back to nature. She continues to strengthen her bond with nature by following its wind and air, being exposed to its light and rain, and conversing.