Charlottenburg, Berlin
Jeehye Song
Hey, I'm Still Here
WentrupWentrup is pleased to present Jeehye Song's first solo exhibition with the gallery, Hey, I'm Still Here. In Stephen Hawking’s black holes, the world curves inward. Mass accumulates, time loses direction, and everything visible is pushed toward a boundary beyond which meaning does not vanish but condenses. Black holes are not emptiness, but excess. Jeehye Song’s paintings operate in a similar manner. Her work depicts figures that dissolve, shift. Contours are unstable. Identity appears to disintegrate at the very moment of observation. Bodies flow, skin becomes color, color becomes movement. The fluid evokes both intimacy and unease. Bodily presence is recognizable but not quite tangible. Like water, they are in flux, and that is precisely where the courage lies: their refusal to solidify. Hawking’s event horizon is a boundary of knowledge. In Song’s paintings, it is the boundary of the self. One does not see the whole, but traces, like light reaching the edge of a black hole. Black holes in the universe and in painting are sites of transformation, places of extreme proximity; no dissolution occurs, but rather a different way of seeing. —Tina Wentrup "Jeehye Song’s painting convinces not only through exceptional image-making and formal precision, but through a depth of content that extends far beyond a purely visual experience. Song’s work moves impressively between painterly tradition, contemporary visual language, and conceptual reflection and she harnesses precisely this tension to raise central questions concerning the artist’s role and the function of painting as a medium in the present. At the same time, she remains, in the best sense, deeply rooted in the traditions of the genre of painting." —Dr. Nico Anklam, Museum Director, Kunsthalle Recklinghausen Jeehye Song (b. 1991 in Seoul, lives and works in Düsseldorf) completed her studies at the Düsseldorf Art Academy in 2021 as a Master student of Prof. Andreas Schulze. In 2025, Song was awarded the prestigious Art Prize Junger Westen, which was accompanied by a solo exhibition at Kunsthalle Reklinghausen. The artist’s solo and group exhibitions span galleries and institutions across Germany, Denmark, Finland, Italy, South Korea, and the United States. Song’s works are, among others, in the collections of Kunsthalle Recklinghausen, Germany; PARK SEOBO Foundation, South Korea; Sparkasse Gera, Germany; Artothek Köln, Germany and Nielsen Collection, Denmark.