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A canvas isn’t a backdrop—it’s a body for sensation
Junghyun Song’s practice begins with a simple question: what kind of canvas should be made first? Her background in textiles and fashion design changed how she looks at cloth. Fabric is not just a material. It’s a carrier of sensation and time—something that holds traces as it builds up.
Song focuses on the grain of cloth, its flexibility, and the expressive power of its physical presence. She continues to expand these qualities into the language of painting.
Conventional painting places an image on a smooth surface. Song rebuilds the surface itself. She brings textile texture onto the canvas and constructs the picture through layers. Feelings gathered from everyday life are reorganized through this process. The result is not simply a ground for color, but a surface that responds—like a body reacting to light and the viewer’s gaze.
“Canvas Dressing”: a way of clothing the canvas
Song calls her method “Canvas Dressing”. As in making a garment, the act of “dressing” comes first. What matters here is not a decorative mix of media, but structure. Layers of fabric and the direction of its grain become the core of the work.
The texture formed by wrapping and overlaying cotton cloth can’t be replaced by brushwork. Song keeps that difference intact. This is not a forced gesture to escape flatness. It’s a decision to bring the properties of fiber directly into painting—and let the surface lead.
The Life series: weaving, tying, and painting again
In the Life series, Song begins by constructing the support itself. She first paints cotton cloth cut at regular intervals. Then she reweaves it through weaving and tying, building a new structure before adding paint again and again.
Through this process, subtle rises and falls appear across the surface. Small gaps remain, too. This is why the work feels tactile even as a painting.
When the direction of light shifts, the surface changes with it. Color and shadow vary depending on the viewing angle—an effect that emerges naturally from the woven structure. The flexibility of fiber is also used to bring lines into relief. Rhythm appears. So does a sense of movement held within the surface.
Like warp and weft: where relationships and feelings intersect
Song connects the structure of weaving to the feeling of living. Just as warp and weft cross to form cloth, our days continue through overlapping emotions and events. Knots formed in the process can bring relationships to mind—ways the inner world and the outside world touch.
Color starts from lived experience: the hues of Jeju’s sea, a red glow on an evening walk, a deep dawn sky stitched with stars, even a rainbow that lingers briefly after rain. Song re-forms these memories into color. Then she accumulates them through repeated weaving and painting.
Her work doesn’t close into a single interpretation. Instead, it stays open—so the viewer’s own memories and emotions can overlap with the surface and begin another story.
Explore more of Junghyun Song’s work:
🌐 Visit the artist’s website
📸 See more works on Instagram
