Hyunsun Jeon 4 and 6 Placed Beside the Symbols, 2026

Executed in watercolor on canvas, 4 and 6 Placed Beside the Symbols is a large-scale work that combines layered table-top imagery with schematic drawing. Across a mosaic of color fields, Hyunsun Jeon builds planar shapes from small brushstrokes that read as both painted texture and pictorial logic. Distinct elements—some enclosed, some open—sit beside one another in a precise arrangement.

Jeon has developed a distinct iconography that combines figurative elements, such as trees, fruits, and objects from everyday life, with abstract forms, color planes and, increasingly since 2014, sets of classic geometric shapes. Jeon's forms are engaged in a constant shift between dimensions and associations—a cone, for example, may occur as a triangle, rendered with color gradients to suggest depth, or in the form of volcanoes, mountains, or hats. Jeon's project has an all-encompassing, even world-building quality: quoting different styles as motifs, a work might simultaneously include painterly passages, pointillist sections or simulated brushstrokes, and motifs that have the linear quality of digital renderings or pixelation.