KAAC × Golden hof
Hanbeon Deo (한번 더) presents unique perspectives around the notion of “one more time” by artists from the Korean American Artist Collective (KAAC), curated by Aaron Chung.
Each work in this exhibition asks what it means to remember and to repeat. History, place, and process are reimagined. Moments are infused with nostalgia that looks forward.
At Golden HOF & NY Kimchi, where classic Korean meets modern American, these works come together to express the richness and breadth of the lived Korean American experience while honoring a shared heritage.
Here’s to more. Always. Again. 짠!
FEATURED ARTISTS
Aaron Chung
Coleen Baik
Dan-Ah Kim
David Kim
Eunsoo Jeong
Jeffrey Yoo Warren
➀ EUNSOO JEONG
Eunsoo Jeong is a Los Angeles-based artist and the creator of Koreangry, a comic/zine series based on her daily struggles as a Korean-American. The Koreangry zine series illustrates the artist's life journey through an asian gumby look alike character and is told with a hint of sarcasm, humor, and empathy in a hand-made world. Her comic has become a safe space to vent, share secrets, and process lived experiences that reflect her immigrant life dating back from the early 2000s. Her handmade and witty props often include nostalgia of her childhood and she often experiments with different textures by using creative ways to upcycle. Her inspiration comes from items that represent the time period, mechanical wooden toys, and sculptures that embody movement and energy.
-
Wood, Polymer Clay, Fabric & Mixed Media, painted with Acrylic Gouache
11.2"L x 6.1"W x 15.1"H
2025Hanbeondo… Hanpando? is a reflection of two different scenes from the 1990s in Korea. The bottom of the work table includes three arcade machines that the artist remembers fondly from her childhood memories. These 오락기s were huge entertainment for Korean kids who played those arcade games relentlessly before and after school. These arcade machines were always precariously placed outside without much care for safety or adult supervision in the front or back of small grocery markets (hence the stacks of beer crates). It was very common to spot these machines with kids squatting down on cheaply made plastic chairs to play the games. Here, the kids would often chant “Hanpando?” which translates to one more time?”, which often led to emotional battles full of adrenaline, pressuring each other to go on until their coins ran out.
In contrast to the arcade machines, the work desk on top reflects a 90s office scene. The 90s bulky computer, telephone with cords, colorful plastic floppy disks, the “at-a-glance” loose leaf desk calendar, the vending machine coffee and energy drink, and office supplies illustrate the transitional phase between analogue and modern technology in the 90's. The monitor depicts an error message that often was displayed, creating a sense of urgency to give reboot and try “one more time”
These two scenes (arcade machines such as this and 90’s office supplies) no longer exist today. The artist invites you to explore these two contrasting moments from her experience in the 90s that she holds dearly, recreating her memory of “Hanbeondo” for you.
➁ DAN-AH KIM
Dan-ah Kim is an artist and designer, born in Seoul and now living in Brooklyn, New York. She works as a graphic designer for film & television, and as an illustrator and author of picture books. Her fine art is mostly mixed media; including gouache, acrylic, pencil, cut paper, thread, and pressed flowers. She has done artist residencies at Can Serrat in El Bruc, Spain, and NES in Skagaströnd, Iceland. Her work is often rooted in storytelling, exploring the interior lives of women and the balance between vulnerability and strength.
-
Mixed media
(gouache, pencil, cut paper, thread)
16” x 20”
2025 -
Mixed media
(gouache, pencil, cut paper, thread)16” x 20”
2025
➂ Aaron Chung
Aaron Chung (b. San Francisco, CA 1990, lives in Queens, New York) received his Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree at the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2013 with a painting major and art history minor. His multidisciplinary works explore themes of identity, Art History, and his experiences within the Korean American diaspora.
Aaron received a Fulbright Fellowship in 2013 to research muninhwa (traditional Korean literati painting) and classical drawing techniques with ink on mulberry paper. He also participated in an artist residency in Onishi Gunma, Japan, at Shiro Oni Studio, where he explored themes inspired by Junichiro Tanizaki's essay, In Praise of Shadows. Aaron has shown pieces in group exhibitions at Baltimore's Subbasement Artist Studios, Current Space, galleries at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition Brooklyn, NY, Culture House DC, IMUR Gallery at Salmagundi, NY, and Hana Makgeolli. Internationally, he has exhibited at the Kana Art Festival in Gunma, Japan, and the Topohaus Art Gallery and United Gallery in Seoul, South Korea. Aaron continues his studio practice in New York and is a member of the Korean American Artist Collective (KAAC).
-
Ink, Acrylic, and Dry Cleaning Tags on Hanji
60” x 40”
2025Inspired by Korean folktales, I imagine the unspoken moments between characters that occurred within or outside of the story’s frame. I picture a scene of the first mother showing pity towards the tiger who failed the transformation trail that she succeeded in. It is dawn, signified by the caw of a nearby rooster with magpies laughing in the distance at their desire to become human. These scenes come out like a stream of consciousness. To fill gaps between characters, I would fill with ink blots, flower motifs, shot glasses, moonjars, and gestural hands.
I paint to find meaning and connection with stories from my culture and use hanji as my primary substrate for it is a material that surrounded my ancestors walls and floorboards, the very surfaces I imagine the characters in these stories would have roamed. The act of painting these works is liberating, allowing me to have ownership of these myths and to once again explore their landscape.
-
Acrylic on Cut Canvas, Mesh, Wood Brackets, and Dry Cleaning Tags
75" X 72" X 8"
2021As light floods through suspended layers of cut canvas–familiar shapes of flowers, birds, and rock formations emerge. These shapes ascend into vertical columns and their shadows echo against a backdrop of acrylic paint and calligraphy. Along the upper edge, dry cleaning tags position themselves as the artist's signature.
As part of my Gyopo Chaekgeori series, Go Stop/Hwatu shows specific motifs and colors inspired by traditional Korean playing cards. By combining imagery from the game’s unique pieces, I create a landscape formatted in multilayered scrolls. Like many of my works, this piece utilizes Korean subject matter and paints a scene designed for me to get lost in. Through an abstract hill, oblong flower petals, and a celestial body along the horizon, I hope that these symbols and images will guide me someplace I have yet to discover.
-
Gold Pigment and Ink on Mulberry Paper
83in X 118in
2014As part of my earlier series, Written Perception, Chul was made while studying literati painting techniques during my Fulbright in South Korea. I repeatedly wrote words and phrases with a brush on paper to understand the gestural nuances. As I practiced this ancestral craft and wrote the exact words repeatedly, the text slowly became less about the word’s meaning and more about lines or texture on paper. This perception felt reflective of my experience perceiving my identity within the diaspora– capturing moments of familiarity that solely touch the surface.
With one sheet contrasting the other, I made a diptych with the word Chul written as a repeat pattern. Its stand-alone meaning is iron, but if used in different contexts, its definition can suggest other notions like maturity or resilience.
In light of the show Hanbeondeo, I share Chul as a piece that explores my time writing in hangeul through traditional materials, techniques, and spirit. By extensively writing Chul, I wanted to contemplate the calligraphy exercises taught to me and how a word’s meaning could evolve through its visual characteristics.
➃ COLEEN BAIK
Coleen Baik is a Korean American multidisciplinary artist and writer based in NYC. Her current practice centers around animation, painting, and the essay; she explores themes like absence, longing, memory, and myth. Her short films have screened at Brooklyn Academy of Music, Everyman Cinema in London, and in domestic and international festivals.
-
India ink on Bristol paper, maple plywood base
38” x 12” x 0.75”
2025Leisure, or 여유, presents a tableau of Korean women in traditional dress sharing a relaxed moment. Here, we see them drinking, and enjoying anju (Korean word for food eaten with alcohol), together. One reclines chummily against the lap of a peer; another smokes a long pipe. Yet another dozes, her gache (traditional wig) askew without a care. One woman wears a hat with feathers, reminiscent of those worn by military officers during the Joseon Dynasty. All of them serve themselves. As evident from traditional paintings as well as photographs, this kind of scene is historically unlikely. Military roles, for example, were closed to women. Confucian principles, whose roots run deep into Korea’s past, prohibited women from drinking. The modest woman in service of others was the ideal. Leisure | 여유 playfully confronts this by centering women in a scene of collective self-indulgence. Details offer themselves up on closer inspection like Easter eggs: a scar reflects one sported by the artist; a saucy pair alludes to the artist’s sisters (who are twins); the rightmost figure bears a likeness to the artist’s grandmother. The presiding gaze is direct, cheeky, sometimes imperious. Feet are carelessly exposed, plates piled high, bottles full. The women are free, unhurried, and quite simply having a good time.