K.o.n.g. Gallery will present a special group exhibition titled “Vanishing Landscapes: The Time of the Earth We Are Facing”, bringing together works by Michael Kenna (UK), Zin-hee Park (Korea), and Tiina Itkonen (Finland).
The exhibition examines climate change not as a distant future scenario, but as an ongoing present, through three distinct artistic approaches developed across different geographies and timeframes. Rather than illustrating environmental issues, the artists engage with climate crisis as something already embedded in the landscapes we inhabit, record, and lose.
A key point of departure is Michael Kenna’s 2007 series depicting Solseom(Pine trees) in Samcheok, Gangwon Province in Korea. Widely recognized as a rare case in which a photographic work contributed to halting large-scale industrial development, the series is revisited here as an example of how art can function as an active agent in environmental preservation.
The exhibition further brings together Zin-hee Park’s paintings, which metaphorically trace the migration of plant species caused by climate disruption, and Tiina Itkonen’s photographic archive of Greenland, accumulated over more than three decades, documenting the gradual retreat of glaciers and the lives of Inuit communities.
This project unfolds at a moment when global discourse on climate action is regaining urgency, coinciding with Korea being considered as a potential host country for the 2026 UNFCCC Climate Week. Within this context, the exhibition proposes art as a form of long-term witnessing — a means of recording, remembering, and critically reflecting on environmental transformation beyond policy language.