Exhibitions

Hyunjeong Lim

Trip West

Influenced by her journey from South Korea to the United States, Hyunjeong Lim’s surrealistic landscape paintings blend personal and cultural narratives, inviting us to reflect on our own internal and external wanderings.

Hyunjeong Lim. Trip West (middle), 2023. Oil and acrylic on canvas. 48 x 36 inches
  • April 3 - 24, 2025
  • Opening: Thursday, April 3, 6:00 — 8:00pm

Trip West allures us into an elaborate world of fantastical creatures and imaginary environments where unconscious memories, surreal landscapes, and individual experiences coincide. The exhibition title draws from one of Hyunjeong Lim’s recent paintings, a representation of her journey along the vast West Coast, following her move from South Korea to the United States in 2018.

The grand nature of our region’s national parks impacted Lim, sparking a dialogue between her imagined mindscapes and the living landscapes of the real world. In these highly detailed allegories of exploration—inspired by and paying playful homage to Renaissance masters like Pieter Bruegel and Hieronymus Bosch—walking fish and faceless beings obscure the line between the mythical and the tangible. As Lim navigated her new life in the U.S., moving between cities, she often felt like an outsider. Yet the sublime and overwhelming beauty of the West Coast’s natural environments rooted her as an artist and shaped this body of work: a series of fragmented images that weave together past and present, fiction, and reality.

Lim aims to provide a visual language that encourages viewers to consider their own emotional landscapes and engage with her paintings as portals into alternative worlds. By combining historical painting traditions with her own fabricated worlds, Lim offers a unique perspective on the possibilities of shared understanding. Trip West is a universal invitation to connect and contemplate the intricate layers of memory, response, and place.


Hyunjeong Lim. Inspiration Point, 2023. Oil and acrylic on canvas. 24 x 30 inches
Hyunjeong Lim. Spring, 2023. Oil and acrylic on canvas. 24 x 24 inches
 

About the Artist

Hyunjeong Lim has built a successful artistic career across multiple global cities. Educated in Seoul and London, she absorbed diverse cultural traditions, which she reflects in her work. Lim holds an MA in fine art from Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design and a BA in painting from Seoul National University. She has had seven solo exhibitions, including Inspiration Point at A-Lounge Gallery (Seoul, 2023), and Islands of the Mind at OCI Museum of Art (Seoul, 2016), along with numerous international group shows. She participated in the 10th SeMA Nanji Residency Program (Seoul, 2016), and was invited to residencies at OCI Museum of Art (Seoul, 2017), and BankART 1929 (Yokohama, 2014).