Whitestone Gallery presents Mountains as Mountains, Waters as Waters, a solo exhibition by Korean abstract artist Kwon Soonik, on view from August 29 through October 11. Centered on Interstice, the artist’s long-running signature body of work, the exhibition also introduces recent formal developments and offers a focused view of the evolution of Kwon’s practice.

The exhibition title, Mountains as Mountains, Waters as Waters, encapsulates the attitude Kwon has increasingly pursued in his recent work. Just as a mountain exists as a mountain and water as water, Kwon does not seek to explain a fixed meaning or reproduce a particular subject. Instead, his work draws attention to the sensations and resonance inherent in existence itself, reflecting a desire to see things simply as they are. His description of these recent works as “paintings that need no explanation” speaks to the same position: the canvas is not a vehicle for delivering a message, but an autonomous presence. It stands before the viewer as a world in its own right.

Interstice-Pile up & Rub (6-02), 2026, Mixed media on canvas, 116.8 × 91 cm

Kang Seyun, curator at the Seoul Museum of Art, writes: “The artist repeatedly applies and rubs graphite into the canvas, working and compacting its surface. As the graphite catches the light, it develops a deep texture, while the movement of the hand remains as a delicate grain. Repeatedly making dots and rubbing graphite are fundamental to Kwon’s working method. These actions are both a process of making and a period of emptying the self. The Catholic concept of ‘nada,’ which Kwon has mentioned, offers an important key to understanding his approach: only by emptying the self, rather than asserting it, can one encounter something greater. This idea quietly permeates his long, repetitive, and restrained process.”

Mirage-Absence of Ego (3-01), 2026, Mixed media on canvas, 60.6 × 50.5 cm

Standing before Kwon Soonik’s work, what first approaches us is not an image but the thickness of time. His canvases do not readily yield a figurative expression. The closer one looks, the more the dots reveal themselves in layered rhythms, while graphite exposes a delicate grain as the light shifts. Repeated gestures, the resulting matière, and the small interstices shaped across the canvas silently testify to the long duration of the artist’s process.

A work is never completed at once. It is gradually formed through countless repetitions of making dots, rubbing graphite, and working paint into the surface. This is also a period in which an inner density and order take shape. For this reason, Kwon’s work draws our attention not only to the finished result, but to the process through which that result is reached.

Beginning with figurative work, Kwon turned toward abstraction in the early 2010s. This was not a deliberate attempt to break with his earlier practice, but a natural consequence of his deepening interest in how the surface of a painting is constructed. That interest first developed into the Absence of Ego (無我) series and later expanded into Interstice – Pile Up & Rub (積·硏). Although the two series began at different times, Kwon has continued to develop them in parallel, extending his practice through distinct concerns and formal languages.

Mountains as Mountains, Waters as Waters at Whitestone Gallery belongs to this trajectory. Centered on the long-developed Absence of Ego and Interstice – Pile Up & Rub series, the exhibition is particularly notable for suggesting further possibilities through techniques the artist has begun to explore more recently.

After moving from figuration toward abstraction in the early 2010s, Kwon’s attention naturally shifted toward the construction of the pictorial surface. How to give form became more important than what to depict, and the work became a site where bodily movement and material meet.

This change is especially clear in the Absence of Ego series. The countless dots that fill the canvas originated in an imprinting technique Kwon had used in his ceramic practice. The repetition of the same form, almost like stamping a seal, carried over into painting, where the dot became the smallest formal unit of the work. As the dots repeat in an ordered structure, the work slowly assumes its form.

Graphite is another essential material in Absence of Ego. Kwon repeatedly applies and rubs graphite into the canvas, compacting the surface. As it catches the light, the graphite creates a deep texture, while the movement of the artist’s hand remains as a fine grain across the canvas.

The repetition of making dots and rubbing graphite is fundamental to Kwon’s method. These actions are both a working process and a period of emptying the self. The Catholic concept of “nada,” which Kwon has referenced, provides an important clue to his artistic attitude: only when one empties the self, rather than placing it at the center, can one encounter a greater presence. This idea quietly permeates his long, repetitive, and restrained gestures.

Absence of Ego is a body of work in which an image emerges through repetition. This practice later develops in Interstice – Pile Up & Rub into an inquiry into the order of nature and the time of the present.

With Interstice – Pile Up & Rub, Kwon’s attention turns toward nature. Yet he does not reproduce landscapes such as mountains, water, or trees. Rather, he seeks to bring the order and temporality that animate nature onto the canvas—to translate, through a formal language, the principles by which nature generates and renews itself rather than depicting visible objects.

This concern leads to compositions inspired by the structure of taeguk. The planes that make up the canvas derive from the cyclical principle of yin and yang and embody an ever-shifting relationship rather than a fixed image. Different planes meet and push against one another, generating tension; within that tension, the work arrives at balance. What matters to Kwon is not the reproduction of the taeguk symbol itself, but allowing the order that animates nature to inhabit the work.

Color becomes an increasingly important formal language in this process. Kwon’s long-standing interest in what he calls “intermediate colors” is closely connected to a chromatic sensibility shaped by his engagement with dancheong, traditional Korean architectural painting. In dancheong, colors do not exist in isolation; they complete a space through harmony and balance in relation to one another. Kwon brings this sensibility into his paintings, reinterpreting the energy, breath, and organic harmony embedded in dancheong through his own visual language. Color therefore does not simply decorate the canvas. It connects the flow between planes and becomes an organic language through which the order of nature is revealed.

What is most important in Interstice – Pile Up & Rub? The “interstice.” The small spaces formed between adjoining planes are not simply gaps. They are places where yin and yang circulate and meet, and where the present resides at the intersection of past and future. Kwon sees the interstice as the place in which “this moment” exists most fully. Through these minute spaces, the work holds the flow of time while continually returning our gaze to the present. In this sense, the temporality of Interstice – Pile Up & Rub becomes a living time that keeps the present moment alive.

The exhibition title Mountains as Mountains, Waters as Waters quietly articulates the attitude Kwon has pursued in his recent work. The mountain reflects the mountain; the water reflects the water. There is little desire here to explain, interpret, or substitute one thing for another. Instead, the work is guided by an attempt to see existence as it is. Kwon’s description of these works as “paintings that need no explanation” belongs to the same attitude. His canvases are not vehicles for conveying meaning; they exist autonomously.

The exhibition also reveals new possibilities within this trajectory. Kwon has recently begun experimenting with the gwiyal technique, traditionally associated with broad, textured brush application. Whereas his earlier works built density through repeated dots and the rubbing of graphite, gwiyal introduces broader brushwork and a more open response to the flow of material, breathing a new rhythm into the work. It may be too early to define where this change will lead. What is clear, however, is that an artist who has spent decades refining a distinctive visual language is now searching for another formal vocabulary.

Looking back, Kwon’s work has always been an inquiry into the process of constructing the canvas. Absence of Ego, in which the pictorial surface is shaped through repeated dots and accumulated graphite, and Interstice – Pile Up & Rub, which carries the order of nature and the time of the present, arise from different concerns yet coexist within the artist’s inner world. Extending this trajectory, the present exhibition opens the work further and reveals, with particular intensity, Kwon’s recent desire to look toward presence rather than explanation, and toward the canvas itself rather than imposed meaning.

Ultimately, Kwon’s work asks not what it says, but how it exists. The work is no longer a site for explaining a meaning or attaching a symbol. Through countless acts of repetition and accumulation, it comes to exist as a distinctive formal world in itself. It therefore asks us simply to look at the work as it is. The work reflects the work.　
Perhaps this is what is meant by “Mountains as Mountains” and “waters as waters.” It is both Kwon Soonik’s artistic attitude and the formal gesture that Mountains as Mountains, Waters as Waters extends to us.