Moon Kyungwon presents a solo show at Frieze New York 2025.
Widely recognized as a media artist, Moon Kyungwon unveils her Soft Curtain series—paintings of unfamiliar, uncharted landscapes—at Frieze New York 2025, opening on May 7. The works reflect what the artist has come to discover in her return to painting.
“I don’t aim to depict subjects realistically or to reproduce reality as it is. But that doesn’t mean I remain in the realm of abstraction or the imaginary, either. My work is based on my thoughts, sensations, memories, and emotions—landscapes that appear realistic but are, in fact, not real. In that sense, my paintings can be seen as landscapes of subjective reality.” Places that exist but are not real; scenes that feel familiar but have never been seen. Moon Kyungwon invites you, as you stand before the painting, to willingly draw open the soft curtain of this landscape. The world that awaits beyond it belongs to you alone.
Harper’s BAZAAR: To talk about Soft Curtain, it's best to begin by going back to the 2021 exhibition News From Nowhere: Freedom Village, held at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA), Seoul. This new series appears to extend from Landscape, the symbolic place long sought by the botanist A—portrayed by actor Park Jeong-min—in News From Nowhere: Freedom Village. That Landscape, as I recall, was a large-scale painting you created after picking up the brush for the first time in ten years, and it served as a pivotal piece that brought the exhibition to its close.
Moon Kyungwon: "Freedom Village," located in Daeseong-dong, Paju, Gyeonggi Province, is the only civilian-inhabited area within the southern part of the Demilitarized Zone. Even as artists, we were not permitted access to it. After much thought about how to convey this real yet unreachable place to the audience, I chose to distill it into a single landscape painting. That imagined scene of Freedom Village became a symbolic representation—one that deeply moved me as I witnessed viewers encounter it in the middle of the exhibition space and respond to it in their own ways. At the time, I was still engaged in media collaborations with Jeon Joonho, as well as working on my solo project, Promise Park. Yet I found myself increasingly drawn to painting again. I began revisiting earlier works and creating new ones, using landscape painting as a lens for reflection. These were landscapes that felt familiar, as if they might exist somewhere, and yet I kept asking myself: how can I make them come alive again?
Harper’s BAZAAR: Your work is often closely tied to specific places—Passage: Cityscape_Sungnyemun – Sungnyemun, the Samcheong-dong Window Gallery in Bubble Talk, and the glasshouse setting in GreenHouse, for instance. In that sense, can this new series also be understood in relation to the site-specificity of Freedom Village?
Moon Kyungwon: "Freedom Village" is not merely a reference to the Demilitarized Zone or the specific systems of ideology tied to North and South Korea. Through this village, I aimed to reflect the systems and contradictions of the world we live in and to reflect on the global reality created by the errors of institutions and structures. The idea of “Freedom Village” in people’s hearts may differ for each individual. Therefore, the backdrop of this new series goes beyond a specific location; it represents a familiar village that could exist in anyone's mind, while also evoking reflection on time and personal history. Additionally, I attempted to revisit how landscape painting in traditional art history has represented reality. The work began with a specific place, but it later expanded to landscapes like barren tree branches and stone walls, fitting the end of the season. Within these, moments between death and beginning, between end and start, are encapsulated.
Harper’s BAZAAR: In a recent interview with curator Yoon Yuli, you mentioned, “Objective reality is not the direction I pursue. But neither does abstraction, with only gestures left behind, provide me with answers.” Your stance on realism was also evident in a 2011 interview with film director Lee Chang-dong (Illusion, Workroom Press). You stated, “In art, the realistic attitude is not a matter of style, but of actively addressing the issues of our time and generating deeper reflection and communication in subjective life.” I sense that this statement hints at the essence of Soft Curtain.
Moon Kyungwon: I do not pursue the method of depicting objects realistically or capturing reality as it is. However, that does not mean I remain within the realm of imagination or abstraction. Based on my thoughts, sensations, memories, and emotions, I paint landscapes that appear realistic but are, in fact, not real. In this sense, my work can be seen as landscape painting that contains subjective reality.
Harper’s BAZAAR: It’s interesting that you’ve used the concept of "curtain" in this new series. While the term can also be translated as 막 (pronounced "mak") in Chinese characters, a 막 (mak) refers to a thin and fixed structure, whereas a curtain is an object that can be more easily drawn open.
Moon Kyungwon: I believe the word curtain is particularly compelling because, as a boundary between the stage and what lies behind it, it invites the imagination to explore what lies beyond. As you mentioned, the reason I specifically chose the English term curtain instead of 막 (mak) is because a curtain implies the possibility of being drawn open. This concept was further expanded through the phrase soft curtain, which suggests a place that can be flexibly transformed. Even without presenting what might lie beyond, I wanted to symbolize a sensory world that the audience can reach on their own.
Harper’s BAZAAR: The Soft Curtain series can be divided into four parts. At the center is the large-scale painting Soft Curtain_Freedom Village, with Soft Curtain_White, Soft Curtain_Afterimage, and Soft Curtain_A Tree connected to it. Particularly in Soft Curtain_White, the thick snow piled on the branches represents winter in itself. Death or the end is a recurring theme in your work, but winter, in its connection to spring, feels especially hopeful.
Moon Kyungwon: It’s not so much an interest in death or the end itself, but rather that viewing present issues through that premise offers a useful lens—that’s why I return to it often. In a way, it’s like a festival, a kind of commemoration for a new beginning. As you mentioned, winter is both the final image of the world and a hint of what is to come. I once described the bare branches of winter as the framework of life. If we think of life as a skeleton, the snowfall that lightly settles on it feels to me like another kind of curtain over existence. Snow is beautiful, but it disappears quickly. And in watching it fall, people can imagine the moment it will be gone. Even if snow briefly covers things, eventually the branches of life—the essence of the world—are always revealed again.
Harper’s BAZAAR: Like the stone in Seoul Weather Station or the Sungnyemun Gate in Passage: Cityscape_Sungnyemun, the tree in this series appears as an enduring presence that holds the sediment of time. In particular, Soft Curtain_A Tree feels like a solitary figure—standing or fallen—quietly bearing those memories, while Soft Curtain_Afterimage reads as a metaphor not for objective time, but for time as it is subjectively experienced.
Moon Kyungwon: Soft Curtain_A Tree features figures that I painted almost as reflections of myself. In Objectified Landscape, there was also a series of drawings showing human-like forms bearing trees. While it wasn’t a conscious intention, I found myself returning to a perspective that sees nature from a non-human point of view, much like I did then. I think that’s why the work evolved in a way that draws focus to a single tree. Soft Curtain_Afterimage was meant to evoke the feeling of color having faded or been erased. It's layered with scenes of a landscape slowly disappearing as water rises. Water, unlike fixed elements, is always in motion—it flows and shifts—but in this still image, it generates a quiet emotional charge. What lingers is not the landscape itself, but the trace of its passing: the afterimage.
Harper’s BAZAAR: Looking closely at your new series, one senses the passage of time embedded in the work. Whether you’re working with video, carpet, or painting, your practice consistently appears labor-intensive. You’ve often described this approach through the metaphor of “weaving.” Do you believe that effort or toil is something that should inherently accompany art?
Moon Kyungwon: Like the etymology of techne, I often reflect on the beauty of skill in art—not just technique in the conventional sense, but how labor and time become embedded in a work. Even when it’s not visible or explicitly annotated, I believe there’s a certain emotional resonance that comes from work shaped by the artist’s effort. That may be why I tend to invest so much care—sometimes even excessively—into my own process. The metaphor that best captures this is weaving. Weaving is an act of building something, thread by thread, without knowing exactly how the final image will unfold—until suddenly, it does. In fact, many aspects of digital editing or manipulation involve coding that strongly resembles weaving. The same applies to landscape painting: ultimately, it’s a kind of weaving stretched across a grid of time and space.
Harper’s BAZAAR: I understand that you experienced partial vision loss in one eye in 2022. That must have been a profound challenge for a visual artist—but perhaps it also served as a moment to fundamentally reconsider what it means to see.
Moon Kyungwon: It undoubtedly became a turning point that led me back to painting. While working on video projects, it became increasingly difficult to look at monitors in dark rooms. I had developed a retinal condition and had lost almost all vision in one eye—continuing to push through could have resulted in permanent damage. I took a leave of absence from teaching and had to cancel several exhibitions. I missed many great opportunities because of it, but in hindsight, it also gave me the chance to pause and rest. I listened to audiobooks, wrote scripts using voice recordings, and barely used messaging apps, staying in touch only with a few close friends. Looking back now, I see that time as a rather fascinating experience. It allowed me to physically encounter visual theories—like the camera obscura—in a very real way, and it made me deeply aware of how much the world relies on visual interfaces. Even as we live in the age of artificial intelligence—and though I teach media art to students at school—I realized I had only a vague sense of just how far visual perception extends. Art tries to engage multiple senses, but vision still remains at the center. After all, you can’t look at a painting with your eyes closed. Sculpture may originate from the tactile sense of the fingertips, but even that is ultimately perceived through sight. This experience brought me to a fundamental question: what does it truly mean to see?
Harper’s BAZAAR: Then what meaning does painting hold in this era? Given that you’ve worked with various media such as video, programming, and computer graphics, I imagine your return to traditional painting must have felt particularly significant.
Moon Kyungwon: My students often ask the same question—what meaning does painting hold in the context of contemporary art? In the Middle Ages, artists painted what they liked most, often prominently and at the center. Later, during the modern era, perspective became a key technique. At one point, paintings with smooth, polished surfaces—like digital images—were in vogue. At another time, works with expressive brushstrokes and rich textures were more favored. I see all of these tendencies as reflections of their respective eras. Even if painting is a traditional medium, if the approach has changed, then it's a different kind of painting. The painting of today is undoubtedly different from that of the past. Recently, while working on large-scale paintings, I found myself reflecting on the concept of density. Smaller works may reproduce well in photographs, but large-scale works often lose their essence when digitized. In that sense, a big painting might even feel like a counterpoint to the digital age. But that’s precisely what sets contemporary painting apart—the physical presence it commands. A monumental painting like The Coronation of Napoleon holds that kind of power. There’s often a chair placed in front of such works, as if inviting you to pause and stay a while. That’s why the act of visiting a museum and viewing a work in person feels all the more meaningful today. When Mona Lisa mugs began selling, some predicted that no one would bother to see the original at the Louvre. But in reality, people still line up to see the real thing. As platforms like Instagram have made image-based interactions commonplace, the physical presence of a painting has, in a way, become more potent. Painting today carries an emotional charge—a kind of affect. Within that stillness, one is prompted to imagine movement, to interpret, to open the door to the imaginary. It stands in stark contrast to media that update in real time, and that's precisely what makes it so compelling.
Harper’s BAZAAR: You’ve been continuing your collaborative work as a duo with Jeon Joonho. What kind of projects are you working on these days?
Moon Kyungwon: We're currently preparing a project that centers around the theme of lost seasons. We all know the four seasons, but future generations may no longer associate the sound of frogs with spring. When spring and fall disappear, it's not just the seasons we lose but all the sensory experiences tied to them, like food, flowers, and clothing, vanish as well. So we decided to poetically trace and unearth these lost seasons, particularly spring and fall. The project stems from an imagined future: if people living far ahead in time could somehow rediscover the spring and fall that once existed in 2025, perhaps it could delay, even slightly, the destruction of the planet.
Harper’s BAZAAR: You're also working on a feature film project intended for theatrical release, is that right?
Moon Kyungwon: We’re aiming for a release in 2026, with filming set to begin this September. I think we’re living in a time when artists can work across a broad spectrum, without needing to distinguish between the white cube and the cinema. In the Middle Ages, artists were almost like shamans—take Michelangelo, who studied anatomy and mathematics. When Jeon Joonho and I presented El Fin del Mundo at Kassel Documenta in 2012, people often asked whether what we were doing could really be called art. Back then, the prevailing notion was that artists should work alone, and there was little understanding of what a collective could be. Any collaborative project inevitably raised questions about who contributed what percentage, or how credits should be divided. These days, no one asks that anymore. In fact, collectives have become something of a trend. The times have changed. Artists today write music, make films, and use AI as a tool if it suits their practice. Media has already expanded in every direction; now what matters is how we mix those elements to create a unique artistic language. I hope to always remain one of those artists.
Editor/ Anna Son
Photo/ Kim Hyeong Sang