Ha Tae-Im’s Colors Beyond Space at AP Space

Step into Colors Beyond Space, a luminous exhibition by Ha Tae-Im, one of Korea’s most celebrated contemporary artists. On view Sept 9–Oct 10, 2023, at AP Space, this show explores movement, memory, and harmony through radiant bands of color

Some artists paint with color. Others, like Ha Tae-Im, paint with rhythm. With Colors Beyond Space, her first major solo exhibition in New York, AP Space welcomes a globally celebrated force in Korean contemporary abstraction. On view from September 9 to October 10, 2023, this exhibition invites viewers into a luminous world shaped by Ha’s signature color bands—flowing lines of pigment that evoke sound, emotion, and memory all at once.

Colors Beyond Space isn't simply a showcase of formal beauty—it’s an embodiment of movement itself. Each canvas pulses like a musical score, each layer of pigment like a note suspended in time.

Born in 1973, Ha Tae-Im was destined to create. As the daughter of two celebrated Korean painters—Ha In-Du and Ryu Min-Ja—she was immersed in the visual arts from an early age. Yet Ha did not rest within that lineage; she forged a path entirely her own.

She honed her early technique in Europe, studying at the National Academy of Fine Arts in Dijon and Paris, before returning to Korea, where she earned her Doctorate in Painting from the prestigious College of Fine Arts at Hongik University in 2012. This blend of East and West, tradition and experimentation, would come to define her mature work.

Ha Tae-Im’s work is instantly recognizable: radiant ribbons of color layered across smooth surfaces, forming what she calls her “color bands.” These bands are more than design—they are temporal, musical, and spiritual markers, flowing across the canvas like breath or light.

In Colors Beyond Space, Ha pushes this language further, using the band as both motif and metaphor—exploring time, transition, and the unseen forces that move through and around us. Each piece invites the viewer to experience motion in stillness and presence in abstraction.

The exhibition acts as a portal—a way to see how space can be stretched, how time can be layered, how a single line can tell a story of transformation. Ha’s practice is deeply meditative yet always energetic, offering what critics often describe as a visual experience of sound and emotion.

Ha Tae-Im’s work has earned her a place among Korea’s most important living artists. She was featured in the “30 Contemporary Artists Interested in Korea” exhibition at the Seoul Arts Center, joining iconic names such as Park Seo-Bo and Ha Chong-Hyun—an affirmation of her stature within the Dansaekhwa and post-minimalist traditions.

Her career reached an international milestone when her artwork was featured as the backdrop to the 2018 North American Summit between the U.S. and North Korea at the Capella Hotel in Singapore. As the world watched this historic handshake unfold, Ha’s flowing, peaceful visuals framed the moment—an unspoken symbol of connection beyond language.

Her reach continued to expand with a boundary-crossing collaboration with Bentley Motors, in which her color band designs were integrated into a limited edition Bentley Continental GT, blending fine art with high design.

Her works are now housed in esteemed institutions such as the Seoul Museum of Art, Monaco Museum of Contemporary Art, and Doosan Group’s corporate collections, cementing her global impact on the worlds of both contemporary art and design.

In Colors Beyond Space, Ha Tae-Im doesn’t just paint surface. She paints frequency. Emotion. Echoes. Her bands of color may be clean and fluid, but they carry deep tension—between tradition and modernity, stillness and motion, interiority and presence.

This exhibition is an opportunity not just to see her work, but to feel it move through you. Like a passage of music, or a dream retold in light, Ha’s paintings offer the kind of stillness that keeps changing—reminding us that within quiet beauty lies infinite depth.