Eyes Facing Backward / 눈이 뒤집히다, an exhibition by Korean American artist Tae Hwang in relation to American Sculptor, Lawrence Weiner, fellow artist and mentor to Hwang since she was a young adult. The exhibition places Hwang’s recent paintings and drawings in dialogue with language works by Lawrence Weiner (1942–2021). The title of the exhibition, in both Korean and English, draws on a Korean idiom that describes sudden, irrational acts - from extreme violence to minor excesses. For Hwang, the phrase recalls her mother’s humorous scolding when she spent long hours watching cartoons. The English version, Eyes Facing Backward, is a loose translation chosen to reflect her dialogue with Weiner’s practice. It conveys both anger and restless energy, while also signaling the artist’s position of looking both forward and backward, navigating memory, influence, and the shared logic of art. Hwang’s works draw from several American cartoon series, she watched growing up, including Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry. Rendered in a palette of red and black, these images point to themes of cultural consumption, propaganda, and the negotiation of identity within American media.

Big Value, a solo exhibition by Baltimore-based artist Tae Hwang, examines the aesthetics, politics, and alienation of cheap food. By transforming imagery from grocery store coupons into large-scale oil paintings, Hwang situates the coupon image within the broad arc of Western colonialism, as manifested in the visual language of the Dutch still life and the post-Cold War era U.S. convenience store. Big Value presents a visually rich, immersive space in which to reflect on the contradictions of scale — of desire, opportunity, and promise — that constitute immigrant life in America. In this recent body of work Hwang reflects on her childhood stocking shelves in the small grocery store owned by her Korean-born immigrant parents, on the evolving perceptions of immigrant labor, Asian stereotypes, and on the cultural complexities involved in assimilation and consumer culture in America. 

Buildings, Objects, and Systems, Gallery in the Sky, curated by Kirk Shannon‑Butts, World Trade Tower, Baltimore. Born in South Korea,  Hwang now calls Baltimore home. Her newest body of work reflects a layered perspective shaped by these diverse geographies. Through meticulous attention to everyday- from corner stores goods, commercial signage, and the architecture that frames urban life—she examines how objects and built environments both influence and mirror the communities around them. The installation invites viewers to consider how cultural identity, memory, and place intersect within the visual language of American cities