In Muted Rhythm, Lehmann Maupin presents new works by three Korean abstract painters: Nakhee Sung, Sojung Lee, and Han Jin. Featuring three mid-career women artists, the exhibition offers a glimpse into the current landscape of Korean abstraction through the visual trajectories each artist charts. Curated by Jee Young Maeng, Muted Rhythm highlights a synesthetic sensibility that resonates across their practices, exploring a new amplitude generated as these works move beyond the flat surface and exchange vibrations within a shared space.
Nakhee Sung has developed a distinctive abstract language by ‘composing’ rhythmic arrangements of geometric and organic forms through dynamic flows and varied chromatic combinations. Her previous works and exhibition titles often evoke a musical temperament while prompting viewers to imagine the cross-sections, volumes, and three-dimensional spaces these images might inhabit. Trained in traditional East Asian painting, Sojung Lee has consistently pushed beyond convention, experimenting with diverse materials and techniques. The repeated processes of formation, rupture, connection, and layering inherent in her practice create a natural rhythm that expands and reverberates through the viewer’s gaze. Han Jin’s work explores sensory interaction—such as the imagery or sound held within an object of interest—by painting dense, labyrinthine abstractions. These works traverse the threshold between the artificial and the natural, finely calibrating the tension between absence and fullness produced by the interplay of the visual and auditory.
These diverse approaches converge in Muted Rhythm, where each artist extends their practice through newly developed works. Sung’s Sentient Page (2025) retains the natural rhythms generated by her signature combinations of form, layered structures, and gradational techniques, while introducing more recognizable motifs drawn from nature, such as flower petals and trees. Through broad, immersive compositions, stratified forms and nuanced tonal shifts coalesce into more fully realized, dreamlike abstract landscapes. Meanwhile, Lee builds upon the direction of her recent works, such as Unfenced and Genealogy of Traces (both 2025), reworking remnants of paper and fragments from earlier experiments to create compositions at the intersection of improvisation and structure, memory and renewal. Finally, Han presents a new body of paintings shaped by the intuitive sensing and imagining of scenes pursued both visually and aurally. Presented alongside her first sound-based work entitled for Stars Align (2025), Han expands her exploration of how visual and auditory experiences converge and unfold within the exhibition space. Collectively, the works cultivate a quiet yet palpable intensity, as each artist’s distinct visual language contributes to a shared, multilayered rhythm that permeates the space.
About the Artists
Nakhee Sung (b.1971) has spent more than two decades developing a distinctive abstract visual language grounded in intuitive responsiveness and self-devised formal structures. Using fundamental expressive elements, she builds compositions in which color and form create rhythmic movement and a sense of organic fluidity. Her arrangements of organism-like shapes and vibrant color combinations adjust visual depth and spatial tension within the pictorial field. This approach is evident in works such as Portamento from her 2024 solo exhibition, where imagery transitions smoothly across the surface, moving vertically and horizontally in repeated cycles of expansion and contraction. In her recent works, Sung departs from earlier geometric clarity and introduces loosened contours and shifting tensions that evoke unfamiliar and atmospheric landscapes. Sung earned her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and her MA from the Royal College of Art in London. She has presented numerous solo exhibitions at venues including Art Sonje Center and Doosan Gallery, and has participated in major group exhibitions at institutions such as the Ilmin Museum of Art and the Modern Art Gallery in Milan. In 2005, she was selected as a Korean Pavilion artist for the 51st Venice Biennale. Her practice has been supported by residencies in Korea and abroad, including the MMCA Residency Changdong, the Doosan Residency in New York, the Ssamzie Space Studio Program in Seoul, and the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. Her works are held in major public and private collections including the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul Museum of Art, Leeum Samsung Museum of Art, LG Collection, and UBS Art Collection.
Sojung Lee (b. 1979) has long explored hanji (handmade Korean paper) and ink, which are both the starting point and primary materials of her practice, and she continues to question and experiment with the long history of these mediums. Throughout her artistic journey, shifts in her roles and circumstances as a woman and mother have naturally influenced the work, similar to the way paper absorbs or repels ink. Lee’s early works featured controlled drawings on paper in which overlapping and multiplying female forms reflected her interest in the body. She later began easing the methodological constraints she had previously imposed, expanding the boundaries of form and material while pursuing greater freedom in her formal experiments. Lee’s process is marked by persistent movement between personal order and control on one side and the helplessness that comes from chance and unpredictability on the other. This oscillation generates a natural visual rhythm that both creates and disrupts order across the surface of her paintings. Lee received her MFA in Oriental Painting from Seoul National University and her BFA in Korean Painting from the College of Fine Arts at Ewha Womans University. She has held solo exhibitions at P21, Gallery2, Doosan Gallery, and Kumho Museum of Art, and has participated in group exhibitions at institutions including the Jeju Museum of Art, Seoul Museum of Art, and Kumho Museum of Art. Her works are included in public and private collections such as the Kumho Museum of Art, Doosan Gallery, and Suwon Museum of Art.
Han Jin (b. 1979) has explored the limitations of human perception and the impossibility of fully grasping an object through a single sense. Musical influences that appear in her past exhibitions and titles, the abstract vibrations and oscillating amplitudes depicted in her paintings, and videos that capture subtle natural movements all point to her interest in a delicate and multifaceted world. The artist closely attends to the sensations of her own body while also observing and studying external audiovisual stimuli over extended periods until they gradually synchronize with her perception. Her new sound art work for Stars Align (2025) translates the scenes she observes into sound. Each mark becomes analogous to a single note, allowing the work to create a synesthetic experience that resonates with her paintings. Han earned both her BFA and MA from the Korea National University of Arts in Seoul. Recent solo exhibitions have been held at ONE AND J. Gallery, Gallery Chosun, Art Space Pool, and she has participated in group exhibitions at Soorim Cube, Gallery SP, Space K, Art Sonje Center and the Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art. Han’s works are included in public collections including the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art and the Gyeonggi Cultural Foundation in Suwon.
About the Curator
Jee Young Maeng is a curator and writer with over eighteen years of experience in both Seoul and New York. She consults on curatorial projects, writes for museums and galleries. She has held key roles at Doosan Art Center's (2009–20) and Pace Gallery, Seoul (2021–22), and recently directed Sculpture City, Seoul (2024) and co-curated Everyday Nature at Salon Hannam (2024). She is also the author of Small Talk: Conversation in New York (2015) and one at a time (2023), and co-author of Verbs of the Mediator (2024).
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