[Gallery Walk] City Memories Stitched in Lines... Kim Ran's First Solo Exhibition "Throw Back"

From Cityscape to "Topography of Memory"
Weaving Relationships and Memories in Lines
At Nohwarang through March 5

Cities may look like completed landscapes, but in truth they are unfinished aggregates layered with countless hours and emotions. Artist Kim Ran's first solo exhibition, "Throw Back," held at Nohwarang in Insa-dong, persistently proves this fact using "lines," the most primal visual language.

Kim Ran, 'E-Daegu' Mixed media on canvas, 130.3 x 130.3cm, 2025. Photo by Noh Hwarang

From a distance, the canvas resembles the familiar contours of a city. But as you move closer, the city is no longer a flat landscape. Hair-thin lines, like strands of thread, are superimposed dozens of times, building density and rhythm across the surface. These repeated lines are closer to traces of time and memory that have passed over the city than to the buildings or roads that constitute it.

Kim Ran's work begins with perceiving the city as a "site of accumulated memories." Places such as Jeonju Hanok Village, Deoksugung Palace, Suwon Hwaseong Fortress, and Daegu E-World are rearranged after passing through the artist's personal experiences. No figures appear, yet the arrangement of light and the density of buildings clearly preserve the traces of lives that brushed past those places. In particular, the bird's-eye view from above allows the past and present to coexist within a single frame. The gaze that looks down on the city is, in effect, akin to an attitude of stepping back to look at one's memories from a slight distance.

The density and rhythm created by the dozens of repeated lines overwhelm the senses. These lines are not mere visual elements. The tangled and overlapping lines metaphorically represent relationships between people and the emotional traces generated within them. The cityscape thus becomes both a map of relationships and a metaphor for consolation.

Kim Ran, D - Daereungwon, Mixed media on canvas, 130.3 x 130.3 cm, 2025. Photo by Nohwarang

The working method borders on the meditative. After sketching on the canvas, she mixes mortar medium with acrylic paint for coloring, then pierces a piping bag and squeezes out the paint like thread. A single pass is never enough to complete a work. Lines layered ten, twenty times fill the surface. This repetition is closer to a process of passing through time. Blue and red, along with monotone layers of color, evoke subtly different moods, like the shifting hours of a day.

The places that appear in the exhibition, such as Jeonju Hanok Village, Deoksugung Palace, Suwon Hwaseong Fortress, and Daegu E-World, are spaces imbued with the artist's memories. The curved lines of hanok tiled roofs, in particular, were an important starting point for Kim Ran. It was from those curves, which felt as thin as thread, that her current line-based work began. In the piece set against the backdrop of Jeonju Hanok Village, memories of trips with friends and of strolling in hanbok as a child overlap. Through lines, these personal recollections expand into a more universal sentiment.

The exhibition's spatial composition also reveals shifts in the artist's practice. More recent works are placed on the first floor, while relatively early pieces are shown on the second. One can naturally read the progression from a period when lines burst forth boldly to a phase of gradually modulating density and consolidating the pictorial surface. This is the context in which Noh Saehwan, director of Nohwarang in Insa-dong, regards Kim Ran's work as "the result of nearly ten years of accumulation." The format of a first solo exhibition is less a record of short-term experimentation than a point selected upon that long span of time.

Kim Ran poses in front of her work 'J-Jeonju'. Photo by Kim Heeyun

What is particularly intriguing are the cities the artist has never visited in person. Places such as New York, London, and Paris are rendered with colors and lines that are, if anything, more intense than those based on actual experience. Images accumulated through the media, together with imagination, function as another form of memory. At the moment when real memories and imagined memories are treated with the same density, the theme of the city extends beyond personal narrative into a more universal sensibility.

Although "Throw Back" is an exhibition that depicts cities, it is in fact closer to a device that summons each viewer's own memories. One person may recall their commute home when they see Namsan on the canvas, while another may retrieve the feeling of an old trip from the curve of a hanok roof. The time spent lingering in front of the works, and the quiet overlapping of individual memories in those moments, lie close to the core of this exhibition.

The lines are thin, and the repetition is relentless. The result is not so much flamboyant as it is solid. It is no exaggeration to say that the works weave the time of the city. This first solo exhibition is a starting point that signals how far artist Kim Ran may be able to push these lines in the future. The exhibition runs until March 5, 2026.