In Scratching Surface, Emil Urbanek(Germany), Jihee Kim, Katherine Jones(UK), and Meeyoung Kim examine the relationship between the image and the medium’s “surface” in their own languages, and connect it to the conceptual center of the work. The surface of an artwork, as we know, serves as the realm that shapes the artist’s arbitrarily constructed universe and evokes various forms of sensitivity. It is a palpable space that invites us to experience the narrative of the work, which is enriched by the degree of exposure and concealment of the background, the order and orientation of its arrangement. The artists experiment with varying thicknesses and shapes of supports, sometimes fabricating them themselves as needed, and detail their methodologies to reach the finished screen. The exhibition seeks to observe the tensions and moments of organic transition that arise between these various experiments and respond to the new visual structures and layers of sensation thought to be from them.

Emil Urbanek portrays images by sprinkling sifted graphite powder on primed canvases, then applying thin layers of acrylic and oil paint, smearing the black traces. For Urbanek, the canvas serves as a space where the conventional values of height and depth are disrupted, and where covert modalities are embraced. The artist employs arched borders or the outlines of figures that echo them, to form a frame within which they place unidentified subjects. Hybrid beings between humans and animals, as well as the shape of pears, symbolize concepts that resist easy interpretation or fall outside the realm of mainstream consumption. Soon, the entities play loosely with transparent containers and blurred graphite marks, seemingly able to invade the low-light veil at any moment like something breaking an egg and hatching. In their presence, we might question where the boundaries truly lie, inside and outside, and who must pass through the arch.

Jihee Kim creates images using a once-processed screen as her surface. For example, ‘book drawings’ series which utilizes donated books from various cities are the works randomly opened pages overlaid with motifs that are unrelated to the original contents. The result is a fragmentary depiction of the landscape evoked by certain words, which become the title of the work. It is a kind of resistance to the intellectual product that is edited and recorded by a few, and an attempt to quickly release the artist’s visceral sensations. Meanwhile, Rumour was a Fever, Betrayal was Forgiveness.(2025) which occupies two floors of the exhibition hall draws from Kim’s long-standing memories and unconscious diaries. The fragmented narrative words that record the unexplained stimuli that have been eating away at the artist become an open picture book, unfolding scenes that resemble ghost stories or myths. The secrets woven with several prints featuring ambiguous landscapes are either openly revealed or partially obscured by bold strokes. This painterly tug-of-war in Kim’s artwork suggests a process of figurative pleasure that is constantly react to the messages her surfaces convey.

Katherine Jones devises a visual language that metaphorically reflects both the grand and subtle events she observes in her daily life. The artist often projects her inner life into nature, recreating what she encounters as abstract landscapes utilizing the method of printmaking. For instance, flowers, trees, and mountains that the artist observed in the countryside where she was born and raised are often symbolized or dispersed like flashes and transformed into natural objects, animate creatures, and even vaguely architectural figures. Other intimate clues, such as fairy tale characters from her childhood, white nights experienced during travels, and seeds growing on the side of the road, are added to the mix and become the source of scenes filled with nostalgia and warmth. The organic properties of the figures also resemble the clusters of continuous shapes in Thin Skinned(2021), a work of 100 unique pieces of monoprints that can be printed only once unlike the general printmaking technique. The forms which could resemble bird feathers, plant leaves, or even stone tombs, are the artist’s shelter constructed by the fragmented screen.

Meeyoung Kim has been exploring the role of the surface as a link between the inside and outside of the screen for a certain period. In the past, the rhythm of her grating patterns —The Whitest Thing in the World(2013), Beyond(2013)— created a parallax in which the viewer’s gaze touched the surface and let them imagine the space behind it. However, during a recent stay in Scotland, Kim began collecting and cutting out fabrics with various patterns, such as lattice and lace. The artist is now shifting her focus to the surface itself, replacing the thick foundation with thin textiles and using scissors and knives in place of brushes. She seems to be exploring the spatiality of the work as never before, examining the surfaces from all sides before suspending them in the air or layering them in different rhythms, thereby creating an accidental sense of space. The strategy of freely mounting surfaces freed from the canvas frame and colliding three-dimensional screens that multiply themselves seems to converge in the direction of diversifying the physical depth of the painting, a concept she has been exploring for some time.

TextㅣYoojin Lee (Assistant Curator, ThisWeekendRoom)

- ThisWeekendRoom