The Art of Layering and Distilling That Inward Eye
By Sunghwa Kim
The exhibition That Inward Eye presents over 16 exceptional works by three internationally acclaimed artists: Joan Snyder from New York, Megan Rooney from London, and Han Bing from Paris. Joan Snyder, who established a milestone in American feminist art through her pioneering "epic abstraction," shares her deeply personal narratives in Studio Notes (2025). Beneath intimate markers like handprints and handwritten scripts, she elegantly arranges a shimmering pond, giving the canvas a profound visual depth.
Megan Rooney, who envisions herself as an aircraft soaring and gracefully touch-and-going across the canvas, completes her works through an elaborate process of building up layers of paint, pastel, and oil sticks, which she then meticulously refines and polishes using a power sander. In her latest masterpieces such as Over Vales and Hills (2026), where her brushstrokes glide freely, viewers can glimpse an intimate, unspoken dialogue between the artist and the canvas.
Han Bing, a Paris-based artist originally from China, similarly completes her work through a continuous cycle of layering and delicate subtraction, drawing creative inspiration from posters and advertisements in the Paris metro. Rather than focusing on destruction, Han Bing pays close attention to the beautiful silhouettes that naturally emerge and dissolve as paper is layered and poetically textured. Through this, she explores the magnificent aesthetic possibilities that arise when distinct urban boundaries harmoniously interface, much like the rich, overlapping landscapes of a metropolis. By bringing the works of these three visionaries together, the exhibition beautifully illuminates and accentuates the singular clarity of each artist's unique visual language.
