Mendes Wood DM opens 成長物, a solo exhibition by the Korean-born, New York-based painter Eunnam Hong, at its Walker Street space in New York on 11 November 2026, running to 9 January 2027. The opening reception takes place from 6 to 8pm on the first evening.

Hong came to the art world through an unconventional route, following an education in graphic design and a career in fashion and advertising. Her figurative paintings, executed in oil on linen, are constructed like scenes from a story, with reference points in novels and, above all, in film. In an accompanying essay, the critic Barry Schwabsky notes that even a simple still life in her hands carries overtones of allegory, while her figure paintings borrow the composition and detail of a set designer or costume designer on a film set.

At the centre of the work are multiple versions of the artist herself — ambiguous, uniformed protagonists in wigs and costumes who interact with codified, recurring objects. Their hair and skin, often platinum and marble-like, speak to mass-produced ideals of beauty, while doorways, stairwells and passages act as slightly askew stages where freedom and constriction coexist. Hong has described the process as a constant, simultaneous flow without beginning, middle or end, in which time, characters and events overlap.

Writing in the Financial Times, Jill Krasny observed an overwhelming feeling that something momentous is about to occur within the frame — and just outside of it, through a door left ajar. Born in 1979 in Gangwon-do, South Korea, Hong lives and works in New York, and her paintings turn self-representation into a quiet study of cultural otherness, boredom, agency and temptation.