Sunkyung Baek

Sunkyung Baek is a painter who reflects on contemporary society through images of water, flooding, and destabilised familiar spaces. In her practice, water operates as an uncontrollable external force—excessive, quiet, and persistent—slowly entering homes, cars, and rooms. Her paintings move between scenes of ongoing submersion and the residues left after water recedes.
 

Baek’s work reflects her view of contemporary society as one shaped by the excessive accumulation of speed, information, images, and anxiety. Rather than depicting catastrophe as a sudden event, she focuses on gradual saturation and its psychological consequences. Spaces designed for shelter become uneasy environments as water and sediment accumulate, quietly eroding stability. Traces, absences, and suspended conditions remain, suggesting a society shaped by forces beyond individual control.
 

Her work does not offer resolution. Instead, it holds viewers within moments that are neither fully before nor after, where unease quietly persists. Painting becomes a means of tracing anxiety as an ongoing condition rather than a singular crisis.