[Gallery Walk] Why Do Paintings Hold Back Their Words? Three-person Exhibition "Di-Stance" by Kim Sangso, Lim Yoonmook, and Jang Seunggu

Three-Person Exhibition "Di-Stance"
Conditions of Contemporary Painting Considered Through "Distance" and "Stance"
Through March 28 at Rahuin Gallery in Yongsan-gu

Paintings today talk too much. Meaning comes first, and interpretation comes fast. The three-person exhibition "Di-Stance" featuring Kim Sangso, Lim Yoonmook, and Jang Seunggu takes a step back from this speed. Before asking what you have seen, the exhibition first makes you look at the distance left between one painting and another.

D-stance exhibition view. Photo by Rahin Gallery

The three-person exhibition "Di-Stance" with works by Kim Sangso, Lim Yoonmook, and Jang Seunggu is being held at Rahuin Gallery in Yongsan-gu, Seoul. The exhibition runs until March 28, 2026. Here, painting does not rush to a conclusion. Each work stands before the viewer in a state that does not close easily, maintaining the gap that arises the moment it is placed into the world.

The exhibition title "Di-Stance" splits the word "distance" into "Di-" (interval) and "Stance" (attitude). The core concept of the show is the distance that emerges when a work is placed in a public space, and the attitude toward how that distance is handled. The distance in question is not a simple physical gap. As the works pass through various gazes, misunderstandings, and chance encounters, their meaning branches out without being fixed. The exhibition focuses on how painting generates and operates its own distances and boundaries so that this branching can continue.

Kim Sangso’s paintings are structured by obliquely juxtaposing fragmentary scenes captured from everyday life. Deliberate omissions remain on the surface, and the scenes refuse to be stitched into a single narrative. What connects to what, and how, is never fully explained. Instead, the picture plane remains open in a state of "it could be connected," and meaning hesitates in front of the viewer. His paintings are closer to surfaces that wait for interpretation rather than offer explanation.

Exhibition view of Di-Seutaenseu. Photo by Rahuin Gallery

Lim Yoonmook takes the subtle difference between what is "seen" and what "resonates" as the starting point of his work. Similar moments are paired and placed side by side, revealing the "in-between" that lies between the two scenes. The unprimed linen and restrained oil brushwork lower the density of the surface, while at the same time holding meaning back from arriving at a hasty conclusion. Rather than closing into a single meaning, the painting remains within the interval.

Jang Seunggu’s paintings grow out of living conditions in which domestic and working spaces overlap. The uncertainty of drawing that continues without a clear sense of direction is not a flaw in the work but its premise. Thick brushstrokes, overpainting, and loosely left contours disrupt rather than seal boundaries, and they make visible, in the very form of the image, an attitude that accepts the misunderstandings and errors the work may provoke.

View of the D-stance exhibition. Photo by Rahuin Gallery

Through this exhibition, Rahuin Gallery connects the three artists’ different approaches to painting around the question of "distance." It asks how painting can create conditions in which meaning does not settle into a single conclusion but continues to operate within the tension of relationships. Here, painting is proposed not as a finished message, but as a device that enables relationships to persist.

The exhibition is open from Tuesday to Saturday, 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., and is closed on Sundays and Mondays.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.