Whitestone Gallery Seoul presents A Swimming Soul, a group exhibition featuring young Korean and Japanese artists Lee Juyoung, Kisho Kakutani, and Yudai Takeuchi, on view from April 18 to May 24.
Like fish swimming through water, we sometimes move with the current without a clear sense of direction. This drifting state evokes a sense of youth that remains undefined and unfolds within uncertainty. The three artists explore the ambiguity and instability encountered in reality through distinct approaches.
A Swimming Soul
Seoul
2026.04.18 - 05.24
Lee Juyoung
Lee Juyoung’s practice originates from observations of transparent soundproof walls in urban environments. These structures block noise for humans, yet become invisible obstacles and sites of fatal collision for birds. Expanding beyond this initial focus, his work in this exhibition turns toward everyday scenes such as glass surfaces, reflected landscapes, and images that linger like afterimages, blurred as if veiled by fog or clouds. Rather than clearly delineating form, his paintings dwell on the persistence of indistinct images that remain even after the act of looking. Through this, he visualizes ‘Ringwanderung’, a state in which one believes they are moving forward while in fact circling in place, and questions what it means to look beyond within an uncertain gaze.
ABOUT
Artist Jooyoung Lee, who studied Western painting at Dankook University's College of Arts, has focused on the paradoxical coexistence of small beings around urban areas. Recently, he has been interested in transparent noise barriers that protect residential spaces from road noise but pose a lethal threat to birds.
Using GPS maps to locate and observe sites where birds have died, he began to explore these transparent noise barriers through his paintings. He utilizes various shades of blue to depict blurred, out-of-focus scenes, symbolizing these barriers deadly impact on birds. He highlights the survival stories of small beings on the margins. He records these narratives with profound empathy, viewing all forms of life with equal value centered on their intrinsic worth.
Kisho Kakutani
In Kisho Kakutani’s work, scenes are partially obscured by layers of noise. At times resembling a window, at others a curtain, these elements both limit visibility and activate the viewer’s imagination of what lies beyond. Noise does not function as a disturbance but as a generative device that produces images within the viewer’s perception. It acts as both a filter that connects the viewer to the image and a boundary that separates the world, the work, and the self. Within this space between the visible and the invisible, a sense of presence, instability, and conceptual depth emerges. In the newly presented ‘Scrawl’ series, Kakutani intensifies this approach by deliberately erasing parts of the landscape and making his presence more visible within the image. As perception is unsettled by noise, the image resists fixation and continues to shift depending on the viewer’s gaze.
ABOUT
Yudai Takeuchi
Yudai Takeuchi expands black beyond a simple color into an autonomous space and time, constructing pictorial scenes in which different temporalities and sensory dimensions intersect. In his work, black operates as a portal that transforms everyday imagery into another dimension. In this exhibition, he focuses on the state of sleep, especially the moment just before falling asleep when one moves between consciousness and unconsciousness. The sensation of inversion, as if the world were turning or flipping, becomes a key element throughout his work. This creates a dual condition of being disconnected from the world while remaining connected to something beyond, visualizing a state between reality and unreality.
ABOUT
Yudai Takeuchi (b. 2000) is a self-taught artist whose work is defined by its energetic brushwork and striking, vibrant colors. At first glance, his paintings seem to overflow with life, yet they carry a deep, underlying theme: the universal fear of growing old.
His art is inspired by the scenery of Saitama and his mother’s roots in the Philippines. Through these landscapes, he expresses the restlessness of an uncertain future, shaped by the pressures of an oppressive society and institutional barriers.
For Takeuchi, the color "black" is not just a shade, but an autonomous world with its own sense of time. It serves as a portal that connects the innocence of his youth (past), the raw experience of getting through each day (present), and the fear of losing himself to social expectations (future). By using black as an infinite mirror, he invites us to rethink how we face the "here and now."
In A Swimming Soul, the fish functions as a metaphor for moving through an uncertain reality and for a perception that remains in flux. Swimming is not about arriving at a fixed destination but about continuing within a shifting flow. The three artists construct their own worlds and move within them, revealing distinct ways of existing within an ever-changing reality.
A Swimming Soul
2026.04.18 - 05.24
2026.04.18 - 05.24
Seoul
70 Sowol-ro, Yongsan-ku, Seoul, Korea
+822 318 1012
Opening Hours: 11:00 - 19:00
Closed: Monday
+822 318 1012
Opening Hours: 11:00 - 19:00
Closed: Monday