“Corn, Popcorn, Crumbs” brings together paintings and sculptures by Kwon Bongkyun, Shin Jongchan and Lee Jonghwan

A three-person exhibition examining how time, memory and material change the perception of reality opens at Keyshape in western Seoul on Oct. 14.

Titled “Corn, Popcorn, Crumbs,” the exhibition features works by Kwon Bongkyun, Shin Jongchan and Lee Jonghwan. It runs through Oct. 25.

Rather than presenting time as a linear sequence of actions and consequences, the exhibition considers reality as a temporary construction assembled from memory, sensation, experience and judgment. The three artists approach this idea through painting, sculpture and material processes.

Kwon’s paintings examine how perception is shaped by previous experience. Stains and layered surfaces—elements the artist calls “membranes”—partially conceal or reveal painted forms. Images shift according to the viewer’s distance from the canvas and the amount of time spent looking.

Works including “Camouflage,” “Web” and “Walk” move between enlarged fragments and wider scenes. What appears to be visible remains incomplete, positioned between what is currently seen, what has already been remembered and what cannot be fully perceived.

Shin works with dak, the fibre traditionally used to make Korean paper. For “From the Floor, Wherever the Body Stopped,” the artist kneaded and accumulated a fixed quantity of material by hand each day until it could stand independently from the floor.

The repeated labour records the relationship between the material and the artist’s body. A related canvas work preserves traces of the same process, allowing the sculptural mass and the flat surface to refer to each other within the exhibition space.

Lee treats painting as an event subject to growth and decay. He repeatedly paints and removes material, punctures surfaces and constructs columns using pendulum weights and steel balls.

Dead lingzhi mushrooms are inserted into openings in the paintings, linking the preservation of a nonhuman organism with the human desire for longevity. Other works were placed on disused farmland, where they were exposed to sunlight, rain and wind before returning to the gallery.

The resulting paintings are not presented as permanent objects. Their surfaces continue to wear away, making physical change part of each work’s life cycle.

Together, the three practices propose that reality is not a fixed image but something repeatedly formed, altered and remembered through time.

“Corn, Popcorn, Crumbs” is open from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. and is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. Keyshape is located on the third floor of 100 Yangpyeong-ro, Yeongdeungpo District, Seoul.

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