박하 작가는 쉽게 드러나지 않는 가치와 감정을 포착하며, 사랑과 선함을 인간 존재의 본질로 바라보는 시선을 작업의 출발점으로 삼아왔다. 초기 작업에서 그녀는 언어와 회화를 병치하며, 문법적으로 완결되지 않은 문장과 직설적인 단어들을 통해 감정을 솔직하게 드러낸다. 이러한 표현은 작사가로서 언어의 날카로움을 끌어안아 온 이력과 맞닿아 있으며, 어린아이가 말을 배워가듯 여과 없는 감정의 상태를 화면 위에 남기려는 시도로 읽힌다.
최근의 작업에서 작가는 표현의 무게를 자연의 풍경과 색의 흐름으로 옮긴다. 숲과 길, 겹겹이 쌓인 초록의 색면은 보이지 않지만 올곧은 것들에 대한 믿음과, 자신만의 평화를 향해 나아가는 여정을 담는다. 형식은 변화했지만, 사랑을 주는 삶과 나다움을 찾아가는 태도는 여전히 작업의 중심에 있다. 작가의 작품은 감정의 언어에서 존재의 풍경으로 확장되며, 관람자에게 부담 없이 다가가는 공감의 지점을 만들어낸다.
written by ARTISTY, ⓒ ARTISTY Inc.
b. 1992
개인전
2026
TYA (Deficiency-Still life, For east serires), Thereyouare gallery, Korea
2025
AER (three-part solo exhibition series over six months), Culture & Arts Space AER, Korea
2024
-사랑하고 있나요? 네, 하고 있어요, Gallery UP, Korea
-Our Conversation, Cheongpodo Dabam, Pohang, Korea (Supported by Pohang Foundation for Culture)
-취향주택, Pohang Youth Cultural Center, Korea
2023
-Love is Good or Bad, Never On Sunday (artist-run cafe space), Korea
단체전
2025
-HAS in Ulsan, Ulsan Lotte Hotel Art Fair, Korea
-The Spring Preview by 50 Artists, Seongsu Irregular Art Space, Korea
2024
-Weird Hug, Never On Sunday (artist-run cafe space), Korea
2023
-빈칸, Vol.202307, Korea
2022
-레피카: 나의 첫번째 그림, Korea
전시 이외
2026
-Featured Artist New This Week, Artsy (weekly curated collection), 2026
Song Lyric writer
2022“Priority” — Taeyeon, Winter, Max Changmin (2022)
2018 “Shotgun” — gugudan (2018)
2018 “Shine” — Jinwoon Jung (2018)
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The Courage to be Silent: From Discarded Sentences to the Resilient Forest
For a long time, my world was constr ucted of precise words. As a professional lyricist, I spent years capturing fleeting emotions and refining them into rhythmic sentences. However, throughout my diverse career paths—from the logical str uctures of Polymer Engineering to the fast-paced K- pop industry—I began to encounter a persistent silence that words could not fill. I saw how we often drift away from our internal tr uths, swept up by "socially accepted correctness" or unspoken collective agreements. I realized that the exhaustion I felt from trying to fit my soul into these predefined boxes was a shared human condition.
In my early paintings, I attempted to bridge this gap by pouring text onto the canvas. I filled the frames with the "discarded sentences"—the numerous lyrics that never reached the public and felt like remnants of my own failures. But I soon realized that this overflow of words was merely evidence of a deficiency; it was an attempt to explain what only needed to be felt. I decided to stop explaining. I chose "Visual Silence".
Now, I look toward the forest. My current project, "Moving East Again," is a meditation on the forest’s cycle of death and rebirth. A forest may wither, but it inevitably returns, denser and more vibrant than before. To me, the forest is not just a landscape; it is a space of "Staying," where the accumulation of time and the density of life create a sanctuary of recovery.
By removing explicit text, I invite the viewer to face their own internal answers that have been buried under social noise. My paintings are no longer about defining a feeling, but about creating a space where we can simply "stay" and witness our own resilience. Like a forest growing back in the quietude of the morning, we too find our way back to the "East"—to our authentic selves.
