CHUNG, Hyun, Untitled, 2025. Paint on aluminium, 215 x 147 x 118 cm. Edition of 3 Courtesy of the artist & PKM Gallery.

PKM Gallery (40, Samcheong-ro 7-gil, Jongno-gu, Seoul, 03049 ) | October 22 – December 13, 2025

PKM Gallery is pleased to present The Cumulative Burst, a solo exhibition by JUNG Hyun (b.1956), one of Korea’s most esteemed sculptors. 

Bringing together 84 sculptures and drawings created between 1991 and 2025, this exhibition traces over three decades of the artist’s evolving practice.

 It gathers the energy of accumulated time—his enduring experiments with matter and form—and releases it as a new leap forward, offering viewers a moment to reflect on the essence and resilience of human existence in a rapidly changing world.

From the beginning, Jung’s work has centered on the human figure. In the early 1990s, he created distinctive bronze sculptures shaped with tools such as shovels and wooden beams, balancing the raw tactility of clay with the sensitivity of human touch. 

Over time, his focus expanded from the human body to the wider realm of materials—railroad ties, rebar, charcoal—each carrying traces of endurance, memory, and the quiet persistence of time.

In The Cumulative Burst, Jung returns to humanity as the core of his inquiry. 

His new bronze busts, revealed here for the first time, are molded from clay pressed firmly from all directions—figures charged with an intense inner energy. 

Their matte white surfaces, unadorned and elemental, evoke the essence of being stripped to its purest form. Within their hollow eyes, countless moments of life intersect, suspended in a single, timeless instant. Alongside these works, a rhythmical sequence of busts from the 1990s to early 2000s invites contemplation on the passage of time and the enduring strength of the human spirit.

Installed in the gallery’s outdoor garden is a monumental new sculpture inspired by the Su-pyo Bridge (Su-pyo-gyo) on Seoul’s Cheonggyecheon stream. 

CHUNG, Hyun, Untitled, 2025. Paint on bronze, 49 x 24 x 27.5 cm. Edition of 6 Courtesy of the artist & PKM Gallery.

Originally built during the Joseon Dynasty to measure water levels, the bridge today stands largely forgotten in Jangchungdan Park. 

Jung turns his gaze to the underside of the bridge, discovering in its unrefined stones and humble construction a distinctly Korean sense of beauty—shaped not by perfection, but by endurance. 

Through 3D scanning and digital reconstruction, he reimagines the bridge’s heavy stone structure in aluminum, its undulating upper form recalling the flowing water once beneath it and the continuous current of time that carries history forward.

CHUNG, Hyun, Untitled, 2004. Bronze, 54.3 x 20 x 19 cm. Edition of 6 Courtesy of the artist & PKM Gallery.

In the annex gallery, a group of maquette versions of the Su-pyo Bridge sculpture extends the dialogue between the indoor and outdoor spaces, offering viewers an altered sense of scale and perception. 

Nearby, charcoal sculptures made from trees burned in the 2019 Goseong wildfire serve as quiet memorials—Jung carves and polishes the scorched wood with reverence, as if performing a ritual act of cremation. 

The surfaces are finished with white pigment, echoing the gesture of preparing the face for a final farewell. 

Throughout the gallery, drawings rendered in coal tar, a residue of coal and oil distillation, unfold as raw extensions of the artist’s thought and movement—records of emotion, energy, and contemplation.

Over his distinguished career, JUNG Hyun has held more than twenty solo exhibitions, including presentations at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul Museum of Art, Kumho Museum of Art, Kim Chong Yung Museum, and the Palais Royal Garden in Paris.

CHUNG, Hyun, Untitled, 1997. Bronze, 56 x 27 x 20 cm. Edition of 3 Courtesy of the artist & PKM Gallery

 His works reside in major institutional collections such as Leeum Museum of Art, MMCA, Seoul Museum of Art, Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Busan Museum of Art, and Seoul National University Museum of Art. 

His honors include the 2nd Kim Bok-jin Art Award (2024), the Kim Se-jung Sculpture Award (2014), MMCA Artist of the Year (2006), and the Kim Chong Yung Museum Artist Award (2004).