Hotel Art Tour – Naru Moment

Hotel Naru Seoul – MGallery Art Tour

Discover your own poetic inspiration at Hotel Naru Seoul – MGallery, where an Art Tour adds a touch of creativity to your everyday life.

From Airy Navigation by Haegue Yang and The Present of the Century by Choi Jeong Hwa, created exclusively for the hotel, to works by leading figures of modern and contemporary Korean art such as Park Seo-bo, Ha Chong-hyun, Kwon Young-woo, and Kang Seokyeong—explore each art works with brief insights shared by our hotel Concierge.

Enjoy a rare opportunity to view art works inside Naru Suite overlooking the breathtaking Han River, and take a moment to find your own answers within the open-ended beauty of the experience.

Park’s Écriture (描法, myobop) series is often divided into three phases: the early-Écriture (or pencil-Écriture) of the 1970s, mid-Écriture of the 1980s, and late-Écriture (or color-Écriture) beginning in the 2000s. If the artist focused on emptying and disciplining himself through repetitive action through his early-Écriture series, his late-Écriture series seeks unity with nature by creating compositions defined by symmetrical reliefs modeled directly on the canvas, instead of emphasizing the traces of his hand. These elements consist of three layers of traditional Korean paper hanji, which has been soaked in water for more than two months. Built up on the canvas in concise but organic furrows, Park then draws lines with a thick graphite pencil before the surface dries. As a result of these line-drawings, the wet hanji is pushed from side to side to form symmetrical sculptural elements, reminiscent of the ridges between rice paddies. When the hanji dries, the artist adds acrylic paint to the surface to embody the natural scenery that inspires him. Through this repetitive action, the completed works manifest accumulated time, creating a rhythm where Park’s philosophy and vision are interwoven.

American scrap sculptor John Chamberlain created works that burst with energy through a precarious yet momentary sense of order. Using metal car parts, he produced dynamic forms in vivid, candy-like colors, blending the vitality of Abstract Expressionism with the language of Pop Art. Influenced by his time aboard an aircraft carrier during his mid-1940s service in the U.S. Navy, Chamberlain developed a three-dimensional collage technique. He compressed metal to generate intricate folds and textures, then welded disparate elements together, emphasizing volume and mass regardless of overall scale. The formal heterogeneity and immediacy of his process reflect Chamberlain’s deep engagement with the inherent properties of his materials.

This artwork captures and casts the essence of empty wind. The Blank Wind series explores ever-changing and ephemeral beauty. Shall We Dance is a studio formed by Lee Kyung-gyu and Hong Jae-jin, whose interest lies in the unique ambiance found at the intersection of the natural and the artificial. Their creative process involves aesthetically refining forms that defy easy definition. They perceive the gentle, fluid movements of nature—such as wind, waves, and light—as inherently beautiful and seek to embody these moments in their materials. Fascinated by the duality of acrylic—its malleability under heat and pressure despite its rigidity, and its inherent transparency—they shape these qualities into object forms driven by curiosity. The studio continually seeks to expand its creative scope by adding practicality, enabling their sculptural outcomes to seamlessly integrate into everyday life.

Ha Chong-Hyun is best known for his experimentation with paint and commitment to questioning the definition of painting. From 1962 to 1968, Ha devoted himself to making abstract oil paintings in the style of the improvisational abstract art movement known as Art Informel. From 1969, following the founding of the Korean Avant Garde Association (AG), through the mid-1970s, Ha went through a period of expansive “material exploration” centered on objects such as plaster, newspaper, wood, rope, and wooden boxes. During this time, Ha sought out non-artistic and non-traditional media such as flour, newspaper, steel springs, barbed wire, and began utilizing both sides of the canvas made of rough burlap sacks that once carried USAID rations following the Korean War. Exploiting the unique ground material, Ha established an innovative method where he applies thick oil paint to the back and pushes it to the front of the surface through the coarse weave, a process known as bae-ap-bub. This became the basis of his signature Conjunction series. The thick striated paint that oozes to the front is then freely transformed by the artist using tools such as knives, brushes, and wooden spatulas, which Ha appropriately modifies to create patterns that accentuate the pictorial plane. This specific process results in the piece becoming a “conjunction” between material and performance. Such an unconventional methodology illustrates Ha’s defiant attitude towards preexisting hierarchies and modes of painting.

Suki Seokyeong Kang revisits various traditional Korean concepts and methodologies, weaving them together into a unique system of formal logic. In Mat #23-05, Kang reinterprets the court dance Chunaengmu and the musical score Jeongganbo from Joseon Dynasty to create a piece that combines Hwamunseok with a square metal frame that can be displayed on the wall like a painting. Chunaengmu is a rare solo dance among court dances, characterized by its restrained and graceful movements that convey narrative and time. This dance is performed on a mat called Hwamunseok which serves as both the stage that allows the dancer to move and a physical boundary that limits the movement. A visual metaphor for the minimum space allotted for each individual within society, the Hwamunseok mat with its handwoven warp and weft is overlaid by a metal grid structure to create a sense of volume and spatiality. This rectangular frame is at once a unit space of painting that withholds the artist’s vision and the square in Jeongganbo in which time and music is inscribed. Conceptually and formally combining the Hwamunseok and the rectangular frame, the work alludes to movements of each individual, occupying the time of life in one’s own position.

Ha Chong-Hyun is best known for his experimentation with paint and commitment to questioning the definition of painting. From 1962 to 1968, Ha devoted himself to making abstract oil paintings in the style of the improvisational abstract art movement known as Art Informel. From 1969, following the founding of the Korean Avant Garde Association (AG), through the mid-1970s, Ha went through a period of expansive “material exploration” centered on objects such as plaster, newspaper, wood, rope, and wooden boxes. During this time, Ha sought out non-artistic and non-traditional media such as flour, newspaper, steel springs, barbed wire, and began utilizing both sides of the canvas made of rough burlap sacks that once carried USAID rations following the Korean War. Exploiting the unique ground material, Ha established an innovative method where he applies thick oil paint to the back and pushes it to the front of the surface through the coarse weave, a process known as bae-ap-bub. This became the basis of his signature Conjunction series. The thick striated paint that oozes to the front is then freely transformed by the artist using tools such as knives, brushes, and wooden spatulas, which Ha appropriately modifies to create patterns that accentuate the pictorial plane. This specific process results in the piece becoming a “conjunction” between material and performance. Such an unconventional methodology illustrates Ha’s defiant attitude towards preexisting hierarchies and modes of painting.

Airy Navigation is a site-specific installation for the twentieth-floor atrium in Hotel Naru, Seoul. Consisting of eighty blinds in four different colors and resembling an unfurling staircase, the work soars in a diagonal course across the three-story space. The structure of the work, gradually unfolding in concert with the ascending height, draws the viewer’s gaze to the water of “Mapo Naru” beyond the glass windows of the hotel lobby. While the wooden ferry boats sailing up and down the Mapo Naru, once a significant site of trade and transportation, are long gone, the term “Naru (river port)” and the dynamic assembly of blinds invites to recollect the bustling past scenes of the Mapo area. The blinds that are connected at varying heights float in the air like a ship in full sail navigating up the river. Composed of different colors, the intersecting groups of blinds create a constantly changing effect as they organically overlap and transform according to the viewer’s shifting perspectives. When looking up from the lobby, the combination of the gradated colors and the net-like shape created by the blinds creates a sensation of activating movement. Airy Navigation combines the subtle tones that emanate from the local natural elements of river, sky and land, embracing the light that pours in through the building’s large windows and melts into the flow of the seasons.

The Present of the Century reinterprets the colorful forms of Classical and Baroque columns using the artist’s own module-stacking method and vibrant colors. In addition to the joy of viewing art, the work conveys long-established meanings of tower in different traditions and history and sends a message of love and hope to the viewers. The viewer can easily become an artist by taking commemorative photos, participating or sharing the outcomes. At the moment, the work becomes a monument and creates a vibrance to daily life. Art is not by far and high, but at close and low. Not just as a mass of giant sculpture, the work is completed as an art by visitors with a desire to remember and relate to the moment forever.