In Muted Rhythm, Lehmann Maupin presents new works by three Korean abstract painters: Nakhee Sung, Sojung Lee, and Han Jin. Featuring three mid-career women artists, the exhibition offers a glimpse into the current landscape of Korean abstraction through the visual trajectories each artist charts. Curated by Jee Young Maeng, Muted Rhythm highlights a synesthetic sensibility that resonates across their practices, exploring a new amplitude generated as these works move beyond the flat surface and exchange vibrations within a shared space.

Nakhee Sung has developed a distinctive abstract language by ‘composing’ rhythmic arrangements of geometric and organic forms through dynamic flows and varied chromatic combinations. Her previous works and exhibition titles often evoke a musical temperament while prompting viewers to imagine the cross-sections, volumes, and three-dimensional spaces these images might inhabit. Trained in traditional East Asian painting, Sojung Lee has consistently pushed beyond convention, experimenting with diverse materials and techniques. The repeated processes of formation, rupture, connection, and layering inherent in her practice create a natural rhythm that expands and reverberates through the viewer’s gaze. Han Jin’s work explores sensory interaction—such as the imagery or sound held within an object of interest—by painting dense, labyrinthine abstractions. These works traverse the threshold between the artificial and the natural, finely calibrating the tension between absence and fullness produced by the interplay of the visual and auditory.