SUNKYUNG BAEK
b. 2000 Seoul, Korea
Based in London
My work explores a sense of instability in contemporary life through images of water, flooding, and destabilised familiar spaces. I understand contemporary society as shaped by fluidity, flexibility, and mobility. These conditions can generate a sense of unease, which I visualise by disrupting spaces associated with safety, such as homes, cars, and rooms. I use flooding as a metaphor for this process. In my paintings, water operates as an uncontrollable external force–excessive, quiet, and persistent–entering and transforming these spaces. Rather than depicting dramatic catastrophe, I focus on slower processes of accumulation and infiltration.
My work moves between submersion and its aftermath, where traces of sediment, dampness, and residue remain and reshape space. I see the contemporary condition as characterised by an excessive accumulation of information and images, an overwhelming range of options, and constant change, which builds into a flood of uncertainty, anxiety, and ultimately fatigue. I aim to capture a suspended moment in which, like water seeping through the gap of a door, boundaries between inside and outside, stability and instability dissolve.
CV
Education
2026 M.A in Painting, Royal College of Art, London, UK
2024 B.F.A. in Painting, Hongik University, Seoul, Korea
Selected Group Show
2026 Unanchored City, Copeland Gallery, London, UK
The Landscape of Infiltration, Tang Contemporary Art, Beijing, China
London Writes Itself, LBF Contemporary, London, UK
Jackson’s Art Prize, Bankside Gallery, London, UK
Ongoing, Noho Studios, London, UK
Untold, AMP Gallery, London, UK
2025 Nowhere Home, Seojin Art Space Yuyejae, Seoul, Korea
2024 Emerging Artists Exhibition, Art Space Qulia, Seoul, Korea
2022 ASYAAF(2022), HoMA, Seoul, Korea
2021 ASYAAF(2021), HoMA, Seoul, Korea
Awards & Grants
2026 Jackson’s Art Prize, People’s Choice Award Winner, London, UK
2022 Grant from Gyeonggi Cultural Foundation, Korea