NEW YORK, NY.- Almine Rech New York, Tribeca is presenting 'Pause and Flow,' Youngju Joung’s second solo exhibition with the gallery, on view from March 13 to April 25, 2026.

From an elevation, the roof tops of Korean homes made of tiles, corrugated metal, tarp, or any makeshift material that dress the hills in the outskirts of Seoul appear enchanting. Perhaps that alone makes the dal dong nae, or “moon village,” denoting slums or shanty towns, deserving of depiction and memorialization – indeed, South Korean films and dramas frequently feature these panoramic views of the city.

But to make these villages the fixation of one’s work feels fraught, due to the painful history of South Korea’s modernization. Artist Youngju Joung could not be indifferent to this, as she was born in Seoul’s dal dong nae in 1970. To be born in 1970 means Joung’s life began during a time where there was immense nationwide effort to modernize the Korean economy from an agrarian society. The growth of the economy also meant an influx of migration from rural areas into urban centers. But those with low paying factory jobs settled in slums at the mercy of urbanization requiring constant resettling, higher up the hills and out of reach from infrastructure such as plumbing and irrigation.

What makes Joung’s work compelling is not romanticized nostalgia where she mourns the disappearance of these villages. The creased, crumpled, and unfolded hanji that Joung attaches and paints on is emblematic of the lives in such slums. No object is new and everything is reused, over and over. Joung’s hanji should not be mistaken for those of the upper class literati but their detritus. These are the scrap papers used by storekeepers to keep their inventory, the papers children used to draw on to pass the time, and what families used to patch up holes on their walls. If the glimmering lights in her work for a moment allow for amnesia of actual material hardship faced by those living in those villages, Joung reminds her viewers, as well as herself, through the paper’s texture.
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— Diana SeoHyung, writer and translator