Mimesis Art Museum presents a special exhibition 《SYMBOLIC》, on view through November 1.

Symbols embody fluid narratives as well as spiritual and unconscious meanings that shift according to the era, culture, and the context of the individual who employs them. Even today, countless symbols continue to be endlessly reinterpreted—by newly appropriating what has already been used in the past or by overlaying new meanings onto what has been forgotten. If so, can there truly be such a thing as a perfect symbol?

This exhibition focuses not on the “symbol” as a complete noun, but on the reality of incompleteness embodied by the “symbolic”—an adjectival condition that is forever fragmented and can never be made whole. The three participating artists visualize the impossibility of representing their subjects exactly as they are, employing and reconfiguring symbolic elements in their own distinct ways.

The exhibition begins with the work of Sejin Hong. Her attempt to encode sensory dissonance through the language of painting never fully arrives at a complete sign; instead, it remains closer to the symbolic, revealing the incompleteness that the symbolic marker of a promise has contained from the very beginning.

The exhibition continues with the work of Soojung Jung, who overturns the surface of symbols we believed we understood by exposing the blind and irrational wildness of humanity concealed beneath motifs that have long been familiar in art history, comics, and animation.

Finally, in the work of Juna Lee, images that had drifted away from their original meanings, reduced to kitsch-like patterns, encounter a moment in which they recover a primordial aura amid the confusion of paint congealing and layering upon itself. This leaves unresolved a weighty question: can absolute truth and value exist within incompleteness?

Participating Artists: Sejin Hong, Soojung Jung, Juna Lee

“SYMBOLIC”   
2026.07.29 - 2026.11.01
Wed-Sun 10:00 am - 7:00 pm
Mimesis Art Museum
Paju Book City, 253 Munbal-ro, Paju-si, Gyeonggi-do, Korea