Hyunsun Jeon
Hyunsun Jeon was born in 1989 in Seoul. She received her BFA and MFA in painting from Ewha Womans University in 2014 and 2018. The artist lives and works in Seoul.
The artist was one of three finalists for the Jean-François Prat prize in Paris in 2024. She has been awarded the 2023 2nd AHNGOOK Art Prize, AHNGOOK Foundation for Art (2023); 20th SongEun Art Award Excellence Prize, SongEun Art and Cultural Foundation (2020); ChongKunDang Fine Arts Prize (2017); among others.
Hyunsun Jeon has invented a unique pictorial language that employs a Korean chromatic palette predominated by greens, blacks, and blues. Her expansive vocabulary of proportion—some simplified passages for example relate to pixelation in early video games—is suspended between symbolic geometry and suggestive landscape conveying an impending sense of poetic absence and artificial presence. Developing a characteristic approach to the medium, Jeon’s use of watercolor creates a variety of distinct surface textures. The geometric forms in her paintings are often echoed in the three-dimensional structures in which she stages her works.
In 2025, Hyunsun Jeon was chosen for a commission for the Hermès showcase in Seoul (The Forest of Drawing, curated by Hye Jo Yum and Karlee Han). In October 2025, several of her paintings will be included in Colors of Korea, a group exhibition at the Korean Cultural Centre in Paris.
The artist’s exhibitions include: When you understand my secret, it becomes a ghost, Esther Schipper, Berlin (2024); Dui Jip Ki, Esther Schipper, Berlin and Seoul (2023); The 12th Seoul Mediacity Biennale THIS TOO, IS A MAP, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul (2023); The Moments We Encounter, Suwon Ipark Museum of Art, Suwon (2022); ARTSPECTRUM2022, Leeum Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul (2022); Meet Me in the Middle, Gallery2, Seoul (2022); Hay in a Needle Stack, Korean Cultural Center in Hong Kong, Hong Kong (2021); The 20th Song Eun Art Award Exhibition, Song Eun Art Space, Seoul (2020); Hotel Express, Culture Station Seoul 284, Seoul (2020); The adventures of Korean painting: I will go away all by myself, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Cheongju (2019); 6th Chong Kun Dang Fine Arts Prize Exhibition, Sejong Center, Seoul (2019); Red Green Corners, P21, Seoul (2019); BOTANICA, Busan Museum of Art, Busan (2018); Parallel Paths, Alternative Space LOOP, Seoul (2018); Of Nature, Suwon Ipark Museum of Art, Suwon (2018); Forests and Swamps, Weekend, Seoul (2017); The Cone and Conversations, Place MAK, Seoul (2015); and the 37th Joongang Fine art Prize Exhibition, Hangaram Design Museum, Seoul (2015).