"To grasp something, you must let go of something else"_Kim Ha-yoon's Solo Exhibition "Adventure Tales" with Water-based Woodblock Prints in 2025

Young artist Kim Ha-yoon will hold a solo exhibition titled "Adventure Tales" at the Seohak-dong Photo Art Museum in Jeonju from the 9th to the 21st. This exhibition is an opportunity for the artist, who has been working based on traditional Korean painting (color painting), to expand into printmaking as a new medium, showcasing around 30 new pieces and recent works.

The exhibition title "Adventure Tales" signifies stories of moving forward despite difficulties. For the artist, adventure is not about extraordinary events but rather an attitude of facing emotions like uncertainty, fear, and anticipation encountered in daily life. These inner reflections have been metaphorically represented in the images of branches, vines, fruits, and other elements of nature on the canvas. Moments of inspiration, fruition, and contemplation encountered in the repetitive daily life are visualized in the form of "fruits," questioning how one discovers and preserves the meaning of life within the order of nature.

At the core of this exhibition is the artist's first presentation of water-based woodblock prints. Using water-based pigments directly applied to the block and pressing it by hand onto moistened paper, this traditional printing method retains traces of smudging, misalignment, and wood grain. Particularly, due to variations in concentration, moisture, and pigment movement during each printing process, a distinct singularity emerges, showcasing different expressions even from the same block. The artist aims to combine this randomness with the lyricism of painting to expand into new sculptural experiments.

Since 2017, Kim Ha-yoon has been continuing the series "Slow Flower Play," evolving the perspective of life as a 'journey on the road' through the personal symbol of a tree sloth. The images of nature and inner narratives previously expressed mainly in traditional Korean painting are reinterpreted through the materiality and sensation of water-based woodblock prints in this exhibition. Additionally, the simultaneous exploration of copperplate printmaking (etching, mezzotint) since 2022 is also introduced, allowing viewers to trace the artist's formal expansion from painting to printmaking.

The artist expressed, "Internalizing inspiration from nature and gaining enlightenment is ultimately a way of looking at my life, and if these small traces can naturally connect with someone else's adventure tales, it would bring great joy."

Since the first solo exhibition in 2017, Kim Ha-yoon has continuously expanded her artistic world through six solo exhibitions including "Bumpy Path" (2022), "Silent_ Branch" (2024), and participation in over 60 domestic and international group exhibitions.