Mendes Wood DM, New York · 47 Walker Street

Mendes Wood DM presents 成長物, a solo exhibition of new work by Eunnam Hong at its New York gallery, following After Color, her first solo show in Europe at the gallery's Brussels space in 2024.

Living and working in New York, Eunnam Hong came to the art world through an unconventional path following a career in fashion and advertising. Contemplative of these worlds, her figurative paintings, executed in oil on linen, engage in a vivid aesthetic tension between self-representation, autofiction, and uncanny depictions of domestic settings. In her light-flooded portraits, influenced by the history of cinema and photography, she presents multiple versions of herself – ambiguous, uniformed protagonists made up in wigs and costumes. These figures often interact with codified, recurring objects, exploring cultural otherness and dualities between boredom, agency, temptation, and anonymity.

Embodying the propensity of masks to reveal and conceal, Hong’s anesthetized “second selves” or “clones” portray a range of inner states, reflecting the presence of “unknown” or “unseen” actors. Their hair and skin, often platinum and marble-like, speak to mass-produced ideals of beauty, genres of self-broadcasting, and gender roles, evoking environments where freedom and constriction coexist. Hong’s architectural elements – doorways, stairwells, and passages – serve as slightly askew stages of control, perfectionism, and gender play.

Eunnam Hong (b. 1979, Gangwon-do, South Korea) lives and works in New York. She graduated from the Seoul Institute of the Arts. Recent solo exhibitions have been held at Mendes Wood DM, Brussels (2024); Lubov Gallery, New York (2023); and de boer, Los Angeles (2022). Her work is part of the collection of the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Miami.