Tryst 2026 : Aether Group

Land of Hope 37'x28'x24' , Brass wire, wood

Chungmee Lee was born and raised in Korea. I graduated from the College of

Design at Kookmin University. I double-majored in Metal Crafts and Education.

I has been working as a fine art artist in Los Angeles since 2010. I mainly use

copper wire. Using copper wire, I create two-dimensional or three-dimensional

forms to express decorative objects and installations through a visual language. I

create the work by emboding the feeling of interaction within the human

emothions of comuunicationa and connection , which are inherent to the meaning

of copper wire.

I came upon the realization of gratefulness in my life and I felt with grace and love.

These emotions define the idea of communication, and I would like to reflect that

in my work.

One emotion is love. Love is like a lifeline that is the essential source of all energy.

My passion has been to follow the flow of love, evident in my execution of

beautiful, sculpture shapes and forms.

I would like to communicate with the viewers my inner feelings and their

relationships to light and sound, whether visible or invisible.

My work is therefore the concrete creation from these feelings.

I imagine myself in a state of absolute communication wearing the wire woven hat,

bond with the physical wires of electrical card and telephone wire, and surrounded

with the emotional wires of joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness.

studioartlee@gmail.com.

Sky Window_Love,  14'  x14"x2",  Mixed media on Cedar Wood

Eunjoo Song is a visual artist who works across painting, installation art, and media art, incorporating various forms such as painting, sculpture, installation, video, and concert visuals. Song exhibited a public art installation in front of SOMA Museum within Olympic Park, Seoul in 2022, and her installation in the public open space in front of Saemoonan Church in central Seoul has been on display since 2024.

She received a BFA in Painting from Ewha Womans University and an MA in Painting from Hongik University in Seoul, Korea. In 2011, she earned a Ph.D. in Visual Media from the Department of Digital Media at Ewha Womans University.

Wood, especially cedar, became my chosen medium for presenting the sky. The cracks and textures on the bark, along with its distinctive colors, serve as an excellent means for depicting the sky’s extraordinary features. Essentially, I use the organic irregularities-cracks, cuts, and grains-to describe the sky in a detailed and expressive way.

The colors in cedar wood paintings are expressed through overlapping layers, much like trees in nature. Just as our environment influences the colors of our lives, the hues within the cedar wood paintings can shift dramatically. The same piece of wood can be bright or dark, containing both light and shadow. Cedar wood also varies in form and tone depending on the spacing of its annual rings, while its knots and buds introduce unexpected but novel elements into the composition. 

The harmony of these natural elements creates a truly unique cedar wood painting.

Through Sky Literacy, I seek to reconnect with nature by engaging with the sky in a personal and aesthetic manner. My work is an invitation to observe, reflect, and find a renewed appreciation for the sky that surrounds us each day.

https://www.instagram.com/songeunjoo_art

https://www.facebook.com/EunjooSongs

ejsong426@gmail.com

Desert 26-1, 16"x20,  Hanji on Wood Panel

The memories of my childhood at my grandmother’s house, where I gazed through the worn, translucent layers of hanji (Korean rice paper) stretched over wooden window frames, poking holes and doodling on its surface, became the root of my artistic inspiration.

During university, I majored in fine art using hanji, focusing on material research and color relationships. Winning the Special Prize at the Korean Grand Art Exhibition twice, in 1986 and 1988, strengthened my confidence in my artistic path. I have since explored experimental work, creating handmade paper canvases with hanji pulp on standardized canvases.

After moving to California, I was deeply inspired by the desert’s forms, lines, and climate, leading me to explore bright and diverse colors on hanji pulp. Using Indian ink and acrylic, I capture the dry yet vivid hues of the Pacific coast on linen or paper, striving for bold, distinct expressions. Through this process, I continue to create works that reflect nature’s organic beauty and the inspiration it provides.

California is renowned for its vast deserts. Although we have secured water to build cities and live without physical discomfort, it remains a desert—scorching by day and freezing by night. It is an arid land where many diasporas, including Koreans, have made their homes. Living as a stranger in this expansive, desolate environment after leaving my homeland, I began to meditate on these dry and solitary days. This contemplation led me to connect the experience of the diaspora with the desert, choosing it as the central motif of my work. What desert travelers experience is the slow crossing while enduring parching thirst and blistering heat. However, for us, life is not a race that ends once the desert is crossed; we must overcome the desert and learn to live within it.

The idea of painting fish alongside the desert was inspired by the fish as a Christian symbol. Living in the desert is like a fish constantly seeking water to breathe—it is a life of inevitable longing for the Creator. I believe this hope allows us to overcome reality and imbues our lives in the desert with greater value and meaning. Just as a fish yearns for water, when I desperately seek the Lord—my living water—I am granted inspiration, a spirit of challenge, possibility, and hope.

The very process of painting is a source of peace, happiness, and gratitude for me. When I drive to the outskirts of the city, I often see small, dark, hill-like mountains in the distance. On my canvas, I express these desolate, mountain-like hills and the fish in black and white using ink (meok) on Hanji (traditional Korean paper). Through this monochromatic composition, I dream a beautiful dream: that this colorless world will eventually be transformed into the vibrant colors of hope.

kyungkimart@gmail.com 

https://www.kimkyungae.com

https://www.instagram.com/kyungaekimart

Iron Age : Flowers, Metal wire 

Damian Seo is a Los Angeles–based artist whose practice bridges sculpture and two-dimensional work through a foundation in ceramics, sculpture and painting. He sought to create works that extend into the surrounding environment with metal wire on wood panel—transforming into immersive artistic presence.

 Rather than recreating form, the artist renders traces where the flow of time and the vibrations of the mind come to rest. Positioned between abstraction and non-representation, the work captures subtle resonances of the world within sensory gaps that language cannot reach, unfolding them through color, line, and space.

In this practice, nature is not treated as mere landscape, but as the rhythm of existence itself. Each piece begins with an attempt to hold the fleeting present—the moment when wind and light pass and dissolve. Through this pursuit of revealing the unseen, the artist remains a quiet presence before art. Here, art is not understood as a completed object, but as a realm of awe—one that invites continuous encounter, learning, and reverence. 

Rather than recreating form, the artist renders traces where the flow of time and the vibrations of the mind come to rest. Positioned between abstraction and non-representation, the work captures subtle resonances of the world within sensory gaps that language cannot reach, unfolding them through color, line, and space.

In this practice, nature is not treated as mere landscape, but as the rhythm of existence itself. Each piece begins with an attempt to hold the fleeting present—the moment when wind and light pass and dissolve. Through this pursuit of revealing the unseen, the artist remains a quiet presence before art. Here, art is not understood as a completed object, but as a realm of awe—one that invites continuous encounter, learning, and reverence.

https://www.instagram.com/damiansir99

Damianjinseo@gmail.com

Birth, 24'x20"x9" ,Mixed Media (Brass, Resin)

Isabella Kim is a Los Angeles–based artist whose practice bridges sculpture and two-dimensional work through a foundation in ceramics and jewelry design. Trained in ceramics and later in jewelry design at FIDM, she began her career creating intimate, wearable objects before expanding into larger sculptural forms that occupy space. Moving beyond adornment on the body, she sought to create works that extend into the surrounding environment—transforming the language of fashion into immersive artistic presence.

Kim is deeply drawn to the aesthetics of the Renaissance and Art Nouveau periods, eras in which wealth and beauty were powerfully expressed through art. She is fascinated by the relationship between ornamentation and authority, and by how opulence once functioned as a visual language of cultural influence. From a purely aesthetic standpoint, the elegance, architectural detail, and decorative richness of these periods continue to resonate with her practice.

Gold and precious gemstones remain central to her work. These materials, historically associated with prosperity and status, are reinterpreted as symbols of inner radiance. Their reflective surfaces suggest light not only in a physical sense but as a metaphor for positivity and beauty within. In a contemporary society marked by uncertainty and emotional unrest, Kim proposes optimism through luminosity.

By connecting historical beauty with present emotion, her work creates a space where refinement and hope coexist. Through sculptural scale and luminous materiality, she invites viewers to experience art as both adornment and atmosphere—an expansion of beauty into shared space.

https://www.isabellakim.com

https://www.instagram.com/isabellakim_artist

byisabellakim@gmail.com

Particle of Light, 46x" 24 ", Oil on Wood Panel

Ben Park’s work carries the soul of a master colorist, evoking the spirit of  Claude Monet. His ability to capture light - not just visually but emotionally -  feels as if he’s reading light’s inner thoughts. Each pigment, each flicker, is  touched with remarkable sensitivity, transforming the canvas into a conversation between light and soul.  

Through his cosmic works, using soot (그을음) and water (물),  Ben creates a ritual - like experience - tracking the birth of stars, the origin  of life. It feels sacred. His exploration of 빛의 입자 ( particles of light )  radiates warmth, energy, and joy. His art reminds us to stay humble, to celebrate the beauty around us, and to live with respect and gratitude.  

"Particles of Light "

shimmer in countless colors,  

like voices of joy moving through form.  

They gather around my daughter’s laughter,  ripple in the silence of a bowl,  

and glow in the shadow beneath a tree.  They do not simply illuminate -  

they sing the presence of all things.  

Water holds time.  

Fire awakens consciousness.  

Each trace is a thread between past and presence -  a way to witness how we became  

who we are.  

“Traces That Breathe”  
I gather soot 

not to remember fire,  

but to seek what burned before flame.  

Rain arrives - not to cleanse,  

but to disturb memory into motion.  Each droplet stirs the soot,  

a collision of time and matter,  

a spark of something ancient  

becoming form once more.  

I paint traces 

longings that lived in fire,  

that moved with water,  

that settled into soil and rose as mountain,  that flowed as river and reached toward sky.  The universe is not a still image 

it is movement,  

a cosmic choreography of origin,  

an unfolding of the unseen into the seen. 

 findbpark@gmail.com 

Joy, installation (rice, glass cabochons, Diasec-mounted digital print), dimensions variable,

Yunjeong Lee is a multidisciplinary artist exploring the role of art as a catalyst for empathy, solidarity, and community engagement within immigrant communities. She holds both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Western Painting from Ewha Womans University and earned a second Master of Fine Arts at the School of Visual Arts in New York through a merit scholarship.

Lee has presented solo exhibitions in South Korea and the United States and participated in numerous group exhibitions at leading galleries and museums. Her work has been recognized with awards from the Jungang Art Competition and the Korea Art Grand Competition.

Currently, she serves as Art Director of MK SPACE, an alternative exhibition space within the MinKwon Center in New Jersey, curating exhibitions that support immigrant homeless communities and artists with disabilities. She also organizes and leads the “Art DongHaeng” program at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, providing guided tours that foster shared experiences and community connection through art.

Lee’s projects extend art beyond aesthetic appreciation, positioning it as a medium for social connection, support, and communal reflection.

Yunjeong Lee employs a multidisciplinary approach to explore how art can function as a social conduit for empathy, service, and solidarity within immigrant communities. Her practice extends beyond the passive act of viewing, positioning art as an active tool through which sharing and communal healing can take place.

Her projects center on collaboration with immigrant individuals experiencing homelessness—communities that are often socially and economically marginalized. By engaging directly with participants, she listens to their stories, understands their needs, and incorporates their drawings, words, and gestures into the very process and structure of her works. Lee refers to this relational, process-based methodology as “Companion Art”, a practice that expands art into an experience of shared practice and supporting one another. Her representative project, “New Beginning I”, places far greater emphasis on relationship-building and process than on the finished product.

A key element of her practice involves transforming participant-made floral drawings into cabochons and integrating them into installation spaces where words are formed using rice or salt. This method both deepens the work’s message and introduces an additional conceptual layer. The flowers—symbols of resilience, vitality, and new beginnings emerging from harsh conditions—are reassembled within the installation into a powerful collective narrative.

The materials Lee employs—rice, salt, glass cabochons, and lenticular imagery—serve as symbolic and conceptual anchors that expand the meaning of her works. Rice and salt evoke purification, blessing, and life, adding spiritual resonance; lenticular images, which shift with the viewer’s movement, demand an active, multilayered mode of seeing. Together, these materials encourage viewers to move beyond fixed visual and social perspectives, challenging ingrained perceptions of immigrant homelessness.

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and amid ongoing political and economic instability, Lee underscores the importance of human connection, solidarity, and empathy within artistic practice—particularly in an era defined by rapid advances in AI and robotics. Her work demonstrates art’s capacity to strengthen communal bonds and affirms its significance as a social and ethical force.

infomkspace23@gmail.com 

MKSPACE Gallery 

Facebook 

Return to the Kingdom, 57" x 30", Korean Ink and color on Hanji

Born in Seoul, South Korea, the artist received her BFA in Fine Art from Ewha Womans University, where she first began to shape a visual language rooted in sensitivity to material, gesture, and inner reflection. Her artistic path later carried her to Florence, Italy, where she studied painting at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze . Immersed in the spiritual heritage of European art, she encountered Ars Magna as a living philosophy—an experience that profoundly expanded her contemplative approach to image-making.

After settling in the United States, she continued her artistic inquiry through the international art program at California State University, Long Beach. Since 1993, she has been an active member of the Korean Artists Association of Southern California, participating consistently in its annual exhibitions. Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions across California, New York, and South Korea. Alongside her studio practice, she worked for three years as an illustrator for Moonhwa Ilbo , where daily drawing became a quiet discipline of observation and response.

 My work engages deeply with Hanji, traditional Korean paper, not merely as a surface but as a living material that breathes with time. Formed from the fibers of mulberry bark, hanji carries an inherent resilience and permeability that allows it to absorb, hold, and release traces of gesture, water, and pigment.

Rather than imposing an image upon it, I enter into a dialogue with the paper—allowing its texture, grain, and subtle irregularities to guide the movement of color and form. The surface becomes a field where time accumulates: pigments seep, bleed, and settle, echoing the quiet persistence of natural processes.

In this exchange, Hanji transforms from a passive ground into an active participant. It records not only visible marks, but also the invisible rhythms of breath, pressure, and pause. The resulting work is less an image than a residue of presence—a convergence of material, time, and perception.

Through hanji, I seek to reveal what is often overlooked: the fragile yet enduring nature of existence, and the subtle vibrations that linger beneath the visible world.

https://www.knamkung.com

https://www.instagram.com/kyoungnk3927

knamkungart@gmail.com

Before the first light , 24 x 24 , Acrylic on Canvas

Journey into the Vessels of the Heart

Art has always been more than a medium; it was my home and my very life. Growing up by my father’s side, who lived his life through art, I learned to breathe through colors and shapes. The heightened sensitivity I was born with—once a heavy burden to bear—has now evolved into a profound tool, allowing me to perceive and empathize with the intricate layers of human emotion.

Through my long career as an art educator, I observed how difficult it is for people to express their inner narratives. We all carry "vessels of the heart," often filled with emotions and memories we dare not unpack ourselves.

My work is an invitation to share these hidden stories. I want to convey through my art that the long journey of our memories is not a path you walk alone. I hope my paintings serve as a gift of solace and love, reaching out to touch the parts of your soul that need comfort the most.

 Within each of our hearts, there is a quiet whisper of the soul, gently reaching out for the light. It is only when this deep longing is embraced that we can truly shine as we are, beautifully whole within our own space. Through the textures, the colors of nature, and the dancing fragments of light in my art, I wish to touch the subtle, tender layers of human emotion.

Just as colors softly change with the passing moments, I capture those fleeting, fragile feelings—the quiet times when we forget that we ourselves are already a beautiful light. The hydrangeas blooming in my work change their colors depending on the air and the soil around them, looking so much like our own changing hearts.

When all these little fragments finally meet the light, the world feels completely connected and at peace, as if everything is coexisting and returning home to one. Through these pieces, I want to gently share that beautiful moment when we finally embrace our inner warmth and fully enjoy our own light.

https://www.instagram.com/seomeeyun_oh

seomi632@gmail.com