THE HARTZ PROJECT is pleased to present Out of the Ashes, a duo exhibition by Korean artists Yejin Oh and Changyeol Gu, on view from November 7 through December 24, 2026. This exhibition stages a visceral and psychological restructuring, driven by the truth that true transformation begins only after the old world collapses.
Yejin Oh translates her personal struggles with anxiety and obsession into her painterly practice, utilizing a compulsive method of layering paint to calmly trace the subtleties of mind and form. A profound, recurring hue of blue saturates her compositions-a color that captures the ambivalence of serenity and melancholy. When this invisible, introspective blue collides with fire, a rose engulfed in raging flames emerges as a brutal yet sublime metaphor: a searing threshold before destruction that binds inner despair and silent collapses into a ruin of the mind, quietly nurturing the restless impulses of rebirth beneath the ashes.
Yet, the tipping point always arrives, as life never intends to rot within the ruins and ashes. At the precise threshold of awakening, the intrinsic driving force of life takes over. Changyeol Gu abandons the concrete morphology of plants, distilling them into pure, outwardly expanding abstract lines and colors. This growth is no longer a passive adaptation to the environment, but a fervent, uncompromising desire from the depths of the soul-a faceless, mysterious will that crosses boundaries, elegantly encroaching, sprawling, and taking root upon the reassembled blue debris of the portraits and charred blossoms.
Flesh is tempered here; will awakens there. Along this same hidden thread, the two artists achieve an intersection where one reassembles life amidst the ruins, while the other sprawls wildly. Out of the ashes, life never looks back.
