Julia Elise Hong



Alien (2025)

from Haystacks, a group exhibition at CABIN and New York Life Gallery, New York, New York, October 17-November 1, 2025




For the awkward placement of the flowers and the hidden hand, it is hard to tell whether the figure is holding the flowers nor is it a likely appearance of one smelling the flowers. The background suggests some type of seascape or navigation, some exterior, some interior. For me, this is a melancholic picture of an image of flowers and an image of a person, interlocutors that somehow remain mysterious and clandestine to each other, to the effect of a very clear view of what is unclear—or a foreign language. And yet they stay.









Works in Haystacks
Summer’s Whims or Lovers
2025
oil on linen
48 x 48 in / 122 x 122 cm


Mimicry, two figures merging, and queerness of the square among other things.  
The Anatomy of One Summer
2025
oil on canvas
24 x 30 in / 61 x 76.2 cm  The feeling of not knowing whether the image—the lake, the forest, the kiss—is beginning or ending and that in exposure.
Alien
2025
oil on canvas
20 x 20 in / 50.8 x 50.8 cm