Opening May 2, 2025, 6 - 8 PM
Exhibition: May 2 - June 7, 2025
Heekyoung Jeon: Soundings of Blue
SARAHCROWN is pleased to announce Heekyoung Jeon: Soundings of Blue, the South Korean artist's inaugural exhibition with the gallery and her US debut. Featuring a body of new works created in 2025 alongside a selection from the past year, the exhibition invites viewers into Jeon’s deeply intuitive and ocean-inspired visual world, engagement with nature, the senses, and the emotional landscape of color.
Based in Seoul, Jeon’s recent works have been profoundly shaped by her time immersed in the natural environments of South Korea—particularly during artist residencies on Jeju Island and in Shinan’s Jeungdo. These experiences inspired her to deepen her engagement with the rhythms of nature, the sensory presence of water, and the ancestral traditions of the island—most notably the legacy of the Haenyeo, Jeju’s famed women free-divers who harvest the ocean’s depths without oxygen tanks. The exhibition’s title, Soundings of Blue, evokes this act of measuring depth—both literal and metaphorical. Her compositions echo the movement of waterfalls, oceans, and shifting atmospheres but also emotional and intuitive mappings of interior landscapes.
Her lively sceneries are made of fluid brushwork, intricate details, and a palette dominated by shades of blue—ranging from viridian to cobalt, Prussian blue, and indigo. Blue, for Jeon, is far more than a color: it is an emotional register, a state of being, a space of reflection. It expresses the invisible—the humidity in the air, the motion of wind, and the feeling of sinking into the deep sea.
“That sensation of sinking,” she notes, “is like entering a state of deep focus where I come face to face with myself. It’s an inward moment that aligns with the stillness found in the vacuum of the universe.”
Clement Greenberg argued that Abstract Expressionism fell short of fully exploring the potential of color and flatness. In contrast, Heekyoung Jeon’s canvases focus on creating psychological spaces and painterly dimensions, achieving a sense of completeness in color. Her works, while dense in imagery and conceptual expression, retain traces of landscapes.
This debut solo exhibition in the U.S. is an invitation to pause, breathe, and enter Jeon’s fluid worlds—where boundaries dissolve, and painting becomes a form of listening, sensing, and returning to something essential. This exhibition is co-organized with director Grace Minkyung Bak, director of A-Lens (Seoul, KR)
The opening reception will be held on May 2, from 6 to 8 PM. The exhibition will run through June 7, 2025, concurrently to Springs Art Fairs Frieze NY, Nada NY, Independent, Future Fair, and 1-54 Art Fair. For more information, please contact us at info@sarahcrown.com .
More info and images will be released soon. Sign up for our newsletter to stay informed.
About the Artist
Heekyoung Jeon (b. 1981, South Korea) is a Seoul-based painter whose work explores the emotional and philosophical relationship between the self and nature through intuitive abstraction. She holds both a BFA and MFA in Fine Art Painting from Hongik University in Seoul, and is a graduate of Sunhwa Arts High School. Jeon's practice is grounded in sensory observation and meditative process, with recurring themes of water, earth, and atmospheric transition appearing throughout her work.
She has held numerous solo exhibitions in Korea, including Richer Viridian at JJ Gallery (2024), Journey of the Mind at Take Gallery (2023), Moments of Scenery at Jongno Tower (2022), and Into the Blue at Philosopher's Stone (2021). Her work has also been featured in group exhibitions across the country, such as Timeless Art Passion at Heart at Four Seasons Hotel Seoul, 3650 Storage/Interview at the Seoul Museum, Edited Landscape at Gana Busan, and the World Heritage Festival art project at Jeju’s Geomunoreum Lava Tube.
Jeon has participated in several prestigious residency programs, including Art Lab Sanyang in Jeju (2023), Art Like Salt in Shinan’s Jeungdo (2024), and Gyeonggi Creation Center in Ansan (2017–2019), as well as international residencies at Guandu Museum of Fine Art in Taipei, Taitung Art Museum in Taiwan, and Bundanon Trust in Australia.
Her work has been recognized with multiple awards and grants, including support from the MetLife Korea Foundation (2021–2023), the Korea Arts Management Service (2019–2021), and the Naver Foundation. She is also a recipient of the Etro Award (Baekwon Foundation) and the 'Promising' Artist Prize from Geomjae Jeongseon Art Museum. Her paintings are held in numerous collections, including the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Art Bank), Baekwon Foundation, E-Land Foundation, and Taitung Art Museum. In 2022, she published her first artist book, Into the Blue (237 pages, ISBN 979-11-980094-1-8).
SARAHCROWN
373 Broadway #215
New York, NY 10013
HOURS: Thurs - Sat 12-6 and by appointment
For more information, please contact info@sarahcrown.com