2026 Whanki Foundation Artists
KIM JOO YOUNG: Beyond the Window
Since the passing of Kim Whanki in 1974, the Whanki Foundation has played a leading role in the development of Korean contemporary art by supporting promising artists active on the international stage. Many artists who benefited from the Foundation’s sustained support, centred on New York and Paris during its early years, have since established distinctive artistic practices within Korean contemporary art.
The 2026 Whanki Foundation Artists exhibition, Kim Joo Young: Beyond the Window, traces the artistic trajectory of Kim Joo Young, a nomadic artist who has pursued her practice with the support of the Whanki Foundation for nearly four decades, following her first meeting with Madame Kim HyangAn in Paris in 1987. Bringing together works from across her career—from her early 1980s series inspired by the spaces beyond hanok window lattices before leaving for France, to the black paintings created in her Paris studio in 1994, the ten-metre panoramic work presented for her doctoral exhibition at Université Paris VIII, and recent large-scale paintings embracing both her longtime companion dog Cheolsu and the sorrows of the contemporary world—the exhibition reveals layers of contemplation accumulated through the artist’s lifelong nomadic journey.
Describing herself as a Homo Viator—a traveller whose life unfolds through continual movement—the artist has consistently explored the poetic motif of the window(Fenêtre). The unknown world she longed for beyond the closed lattices of hanok windows in her youth gradually came into view through decades of nomadic travel across Paris and distant regions of the world, ultimately arriving at an intimate inner utopia: a small village(Cité). Moonlight rising beyond weathered window frames, the ambient sound of croaking frogs, and the Green Messenger, radiating the warmth of life from amidst the straw, quietly embrace the wounds of both individual lives and the times in which they unfold.
Recalling the artist’s words, “Beyond contemplation, ‘the beyond’ that unfolded on the canvas remained an unattainable abstraction in reality,” the exhibition invites visitors to walk slowly through the imagined landscapes unfolding beyond the window frame and to encounter the inner landscape the artist discovered along her lifelong journey.
