Sprüth Magers in London is showing new paintings by Hyun-Sook Song in conversation with earlier works, in the artist's first exhibition in the United Kingdom. The show runs from 6 November 2026 to 23 January 2027 at the gallery's 7A Grafton Street space, with a public reception on Thursday 5 November from 6 to 8pm.

Song was born in 1952 in Damyang, in South Korea's Jeollanam-do province, and now lives and works in Hamburg. She arrived in West Germany in 1972, expecting to work there for a few years before returning home, and instead built a life and a painting practice there. Her work treats painting as an analogue refuge, picturing fragmentary memories of a rural mid-century Korean childhood and a cultural world that has largely faded. Recent canvases such as 11 Brushstrokes over 1 Brushstroke, made in 2026, reduce her imagery to a handful of sweeping marks.

To coincide with the exhibition, the Goethe-Institut London screens Song's autobiographical film Stoffwechsel. Das drachenprächtige Ungeheuer (Metamorphosis – The Monstrously Splendid Dragon), made in 1997 with Jochen Hiltmann, on 4 November. The film follows memory, migration and transformation through the life cycle of the silkworm.

Song's work is currently also on view in group exhibitions including Isa Mona Lisa at the Hamburger Kunsthalle, Kreuzberg. Kunst und Migration seit 1960 at Gropius Bau in Berlin, and RM x SFMOMA: Between You and Me at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Her paintings are held by institutions including the Kunstmuseum Bern, the Hamburger Kunsthalle, the Leeum Samsung Museum of Modern Art in Seoul and the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo.