Stage of Fragments: Chae Jimin Reconstructs the Meaning of Landscape Through Digital Logic
Upon entering THEO Jakarta’s exhibition space, visitors are immediately confronted by a monumental orange wall that dominates the canvas. Yet as the eye moves along its edges, small openings begin to appear: fragments of sky, stretches of field, an animal, a partially obscured human figure. The wall does not completely conceal anything. Instead, other worlds emerge through its gaps and fragments. This is the first encounter offered by Stage of Fragments: Before the Landscape Settles, a solo exhibition by South Korean artist Chae Jimin, on view at THEO Jakarta from 11 July to 15 August 2026.
Unlike modern landscape painters who construct their images through direct observation of nature, Chae Jimin builds his landscapes from fragments of images that he carefully arranges and considers one by one. Walls, stairs, doors, windows, fields, skies, animals, and human figures coexist within a single canvas. Each element feels familiar when viewed on its own, yet that familiarity shifts once the fragments are brought together. There is no singular narrative holding them in place. Each object exists as an independent image, inviting viewers to navigate the space between what appears real and what is entirely constructed.
What makes these works particularly compelling when examined more closely is the process behind them. Chae describes his approach as Manual Rendering. At first glance, the precise perspectives and clean planes of colour can make his paintings appear digitally generated. Yet the entire process is carried out by hand, using oil paint on canvas. Chae borrows the visual logic of photography, architectural perspective, digital modelling, layering, and controlled lighting, then translates these elements back into the slow, physical process of painting. A deliberate friction emerges between the speed of digital imagery that we consume every day and the time required to complete a single oil painting.
It is this friction that places Chae’s practice within the discourse of the Post-Digital Constructed Landscape. His paintings cannot simply be understood as a nostalgic return to the tradition of landscape painting, nor as straightforward reproductions of digital imagery on canvas. Instead, he investigates how an image is constructed, framed, and ultimately experienced by the eye within today’s visual landscape. Flat planes of colour meet convincing illusions of spatial depth. Architectural structures interrupt open expanses of landscape. Familiar objects are detached from any definitive narrative.
The exhibition’s title, Stage of Fragments, aptly captures this condition. The canvas becomes a stage on which different visual elements temporarily coexist before forming meaning—if they ever fully form one at all. Chae deliberately refrains from directing viewers toward a single interpretation. The relationships between the elements remain open, allowing each work to exist in a state of becoming, never entirely settled.
The Orange Wall Does Not Cover the Whole World offers perhaps the clearest example of this approach. A monumental orange wall dominates the composition, while fragments of sky, landscape, animals, and human presence appear through its openings and along its edges. The wall functions simultaneously as an architectural form and a boundary—one that conceals and reveals at once, separating and connecting different realities within a single image. Two other works, Stage of Fragments #1 and Stage of Fragments #2, extend this exploration by bringing together fragments of landscape and carefully arranged architectural forms that resist the resolution of a singular story. Meanwhile, the smaller Untitled works reveal the same visual language on a more intimate scale.
Today, we increasingly encounter landscape not as a place, but as an image that has already been constructed. Skies are interrupted by screens, spaces are shaped through rendering, objects accumulate like layers, and every scene remains open to further editing. Chae’s works emerge from this condition. Rather than allowing images to remain caught in the accelerated rhythm of the digital world, however, he draws them back into the slow and material process of painting.
At first glance, Chae’s paintings appear clear and precise. Blue skies, green fields, walls, stairs, doors, windows, animals, and human figures are arranged within sharply defined compositions. Yet this visual clarity never quite leads to a stable reality. A wall is also a surface that conceals another image. A door becomes both an entrance and a frame through which another scene appears. A staircase suggests movement without a clearly defined destination, while animals and human figures exist not as protagonists but as temporary witnesses within the pictorial space.
Born in South Korea in 1983, Chae received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from Seoul National University before pursuing a Master of Arts at Chelsea College of Arts in London. His work has been presented at Hermès Liat Tower Singapore, Hermès Shanghai Maison, Gallery Joeun Seoul, and Ginza Tsutaya Tokyo, among other exhibitions.
Through Stage of Fragments: Before the Landscape Settles, THEO Jakarta continues its commitment to presenting significant voices in contemporary Korean art while creating a space for dialogue between Korean and Indonesian audiences. The exhibition invites us to reconsider the meaning of landscape today—not simply as a physical place, but as an image continually shaped by perception, technology, memory, and the material language of painting.
