VOENA at TEFAF NEW YORK 2026
Minjung Kim, Encounter, 2026, Mixed media on mulberry Hanji paper, 140 x 100 cm (55 1/8 x 39 3/8 in.)
Lucio Fontana, Concetto Spaziale (Spatial Concept), 1956, Painted terracotta, 37 x 51 cm (14 1/2 x 20 in.)
The booth presents a dialogue between contemporary artist Minjung Kim, with whom the gallery has a long standing collaboration, and Lucio Fontana, the Italian post-war master and pioneer of Spatialism.
Minjung Kim’s works on Mulberry Hanji paper are rooted in Eastern painting techniques and calligraphy, utilising a rigorous process-focussed approach. Through meticulous layering, cutting, burning, and reassembling, Kim creates mediative and structurally complex surfaces. The imagery of Western abstraction has also had a profound influence on the artist’s unique visual language, in which gesture and rhythm are held in balance with material transformation. Among Kim’s most important influences is Lucio Fontana, as she mentioned in her 2024 Meet the Artists interview for TEFAF Magazine.
Kim's pieces are placed in conversation with Fontana's works, with the selection extending beyond his celebrated Tagli. Concetto Spaziale (Spatial Concept) (1956) stands as a particularly compelling example: an abstract terracotta relief from the Sculture Spaziali series, its surface is punctured by buchi and vigorous sgrafitto, the enacting Fontana's ambition to dissolve the boundary between matter and space. Taken together, the two artists explore the fundamental understanding of surface, space, and material as fields of action, reflection, and transformation.
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