HANNA HUR

Through paintings and installations, Hanna Hur has constructed complex perceptual fields that center vision as a means to the transcendental. For this exhibition, Hur presents a room-sized installation titled 8 that features a new series of paintings on four walls constructed expressly for show. The walls and paintings are specifically arranged in what she refers to as a “situation” that foregrounds the act of seeing and also the visitor’s bodily movement through the installation. The paintings have no determined sequence and this is reflected in the exhibition architecture. The built space encourages visitors to circle around the works and move between them, transiting from more open areas to ones that feel more compressed.

While considered a total immersive artwork, 8 is comprised of eight discrete paintings, each of which bears the same title, Threshold, to generate intentional ambiguity. As the title suggests, the works connote a kind of in-betweenness and point of change. The spiraling form in two of the paintings offers a sense of motion that is set in tension against the meticulously laid grid. In other paintings, a parade of white forms seems to be moving through an amorphous environment. And others still explore shifting geometric forms that evoke the very thresholds that the viewer must pass through to experience them. Hur aims for viewers to have a heightened visual and physical experience—akin to an unnamed rite—which is facilitated by the installation’s architecture and the optical effects produced by each painting.

To accompany 8, Hur has invited artist Na Mira, who is a frequent collaborator, to create a site-specific installation in DOOSAN’s window gallery. With Chord (2024), Mira combines her ongoing manipulation of perspective with references to the colors and optical effects in Hur’s paintings. Mirrors and red gels are used to divide the space to create two spaces. One space is filled with endless reflections and the second resembles a red void, alluding to the first color that disappears from human vision in dim light. Using simple materials, Mira creates a space that is responsive to the moment and the liminal sites of experience.

Hanna Hur (b. 1985, Toronto, Canada) lives and works in Los Angeles. She has held solo exhibitions at spaces such as Dracula’s Revenge (2024, New York, US) and Kristina Kite (2023, Los Angeles, US) and has participated in group exhibitions at various venues, including CAPC Bordeaux (2024, Bordeaux, FR), Aspen Art Museum (2022, Aspen, US), Hammer Museum (2022, Los Angeles, US), and Institute of Contemporary Art (2021, Los Angeles, US). Hur’s work is included in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, US.

Na Mira (b. 1982, Lawrence, US) lives and works in Los Angeles. She has participated in group exhibitions at various venues, including the 15th Gwangju Biennale (2024, Gwangju, KR), the Institute of Contemporary Art (2024, Los Angeles, US), Kunsthalle Zürich (2024, Zurich, CH), Art Sonje Center (2024, Seoul, KR), Real DMZ Project (2024, Paju, KR). Mira’s work is included in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, US.

Christopher Y. Lew is an internationally renowned curator based in New York who has followed Hanna Hur’s work for several years. He held curatorial positions at museums in New York for 15 years before establishing C/O: Curatorial Office, a new curatorial consulting firm.