Seo Mira - Relief (2025), 52 x 52 inches, pigment on canvas.
(HACKENSACK, NJ) -- Riverside Gallery presents Relief: The Distance Within, an exhibition of works by Seo Mira and Seon Kyounglok, from November 10-17, 2025. This marks the first joint exhibition between a mother and son who share a profound artistic bond.
Their works unfold as an intimate dialogue on emotion, perception, and the passage of life—embracing its irregular rhythms and transformations while opening a shared path toward renewal. Through distinct yet resonant visual languages, the two artists translate life’s complexity into forms of reflection and connection. Beyond the personal narrative, the exhibition embodies the continuity of art across generations and the quiet resilience that accompanies healing.
The exhibition was curated by Soojung Hyun - Independent curator based in New York; lecturer in Asian Art History at Montclair State University, New Jersey.
Seo Mira - Relief (2025), 41.75 x 51.25 inches, pigment on canvas.
Seo Mira’s paintings, centered on the theme Relief, unfold within an abstract expressionist language that transforms emotion into layered gestures of color and rhythm. Her works explore emotion as both release and emergence—surfaces where feelings rise, disperse, and return to silence. Using natural pigments, she builds slow strata of tone and texture that trace the physicality of emotion and the breath of time. For Seo, painting becomes a space of healing in which sensitivity, material, and memory of touch converge. Through repetition, emotion takes form and dissolves again into sensation, turning Relief into a visual language of reconciliation and inner liberation.
Seon Kyounglok - Praying Woman, 8 x 10 inches, oil pastel on paper.
Seon Kyounglok’s work, grounded in The Distance Within, constructs the depths of the inner world as a visual selfhood. For him, painting is not an act of fixing or defining an object, but a process of interweaving fragments of emotion, memory, and perception into ever-evolving interpretations. Through shifting perspectives, he turns sensation into poetic visual narratives that reveal the tension between being and awareness. His imagery invites the viewer to enter a space of introspection, where fleeting moments of recognition give rise to new, personal stories within the self.
Together, the two artists engage in a quiet dialogue between generations—a conversation of mother and son walking along the shared path of life and art. Seo, who has long traveled the terrain of creation, and Seon, who now begins his own journey, face each other through painting to affirm their deep emotional connection. Relief: The Distance Within reveals how art becomes another language of life—born through silence, memory, and the act of healing.
Statement (Seo Mira): Relief – A multifaceted emotional expression of alleviation, liberation, a gap, or perhaps the raised surface of relief. I abstractly unfold the layered meanings of this word onto the canvas. Natural pigments are sensitive and tactile materials. I slowly apply these pigments, which are derived from nature, onto canvas or paper, adjusting the density and rhythm of the emotions. With each stroke, I infuse energy, following the flow of emotions and leaving traces behind. Through this repetitive process, emotions take form and then return to layers of emotion. At times satisfying, at other times uncomfortable, these moments pull me back toward the canvas. This pull is my inner sense of ‘relief’ and another level of Relief. This work does not have a defined shape, but it is an abstract layer created by my sensitivity, materials, and time. It is also a tactile relief, and through this process, I heal myself.
Seo Mira - Relief (2025), 24 x 24 inches, pigment on canvas.
Statement (Seon Kyounglok): For me, work is not an act of reproducing an object or fixing its essence. Rather, it is a process of layering my own interpretation onto something that constantly changes with time and perspective. Through the word “relief,” I sought to weave together fragments of unstable objects, emotions, and memories, so that another fragmentary narrative could emerge within the observer’s mind. Ultimately, this work is not an attempt to grasp the essence of existence, but rather an effort to cut out a single cross-section of vast interpretations and create my own personal dictionary from it.
Seon Kyounglok - Lucy, 19 x 24 inches, oil pastel on paper.
Seo Mira was born in Gwangju, Korea and earned her MFA from Cheonnam National University. She is a practicing painter and has received numerous recognitions for her work. In 2011, she was awarded the Grand Prize of the 13th Shinsegae Art Award, followed by the 12th Oh Jiho Art Award in 2013. Recently, Seo was invited by the "AHL Foundation's program: Art in the Workplace" in collaboration with the Bank of Hope in New York. She was also selected for the Beijing Art Residency organized by the Gwangju Museum of Art. Seo has had solo exhibitions such as "Seep into Jade" at Yangnim Art Museum (2023) and "Trace of Presence and Absence" at the Korean Community Center in N.J. (2022). She regularly exhibits her work in Gwangju, Seoul, Beijing, and New York.
Seon Kyounglok is an artist born to a sculptor father and a painter mother, and he is a creator endowed with rich talent. He studied in Korea and is currently pursuing further studies in the United States.
Riverside Gallery is located at 1 Riverside Square, Suite 201 in Hackensack, New Jersey. Riverside Gallery is a 21st century pioneer in bringing talented international artists and exhibiting diverse mediums of art. The Gallery is dedicated to opening a channel for both established and new up-and-coming artists to express their visions, and for clients to experience and appreciate art. Its prestige and reputation stems from special art collections and successful past exhibitions of works by well renowned artists. The Gallery is located at the heart of the art community, only a few minutes from New York City. Artists that have exhibited their work at Riverside Gallery take pride in the fact that their work have been exhibited in a forum that highly values uniqueness, creativity, and talent.
Seon Kyounglok - Waiting for Rain, 19 x 24 inches, oil pastel on paper.
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