Across Winds and Time

Villepin is pleased to present Across Winds and Time, a group exhibition held in a curated house in Seoul, featuring works by Myonghi Kang, Zao Wou-Ki, and Marie de Villepin. This marks Villepin’s second exhibition in South Korea, following Myonghi Kang: The Colors of Time in 2023. It deepens our commitment to the region and its vibrant collector community, and represents a meaningful moment for Villepin in Asia, as an expression of our values as a family of collectors, artists, and storytellers.

More than an exhibition, Across Winds and Time embodies Villepin’s mission: to shape the next era of great artists’ legacies through collectors and the thoughtful management of their collections. At the heart of this mission is our advisory model, powered by a global network of specialist advisors with deep expertise across art history, market strategy, and philanthropic development. This approach empowers collectors and nurtures meaningful communities around key artists and their legacies, ensuring that art continues to inspire across generations. Seoul, chosen with intention, reflects the values that define Villepin. As we expand our presence in Asia, the city becomes a natural home for our vision: a place where relationships are central to every encounter with art.

This philosophy comes to life in the exhibition’s setting - a private residence conceived as a collector’s home, intimate, layered, and alive with memory. With its garden entrance, natural light, and domestic architecture, the space offers a fluid and personal experience, where energy flows freely and art is lived rather than simply viewed. It is less a conventional setting, and more a sanctuary where artworks, ideas, and relationships converge.

The journey begins with Myonghi Kang’s meditative landscapes, shaped by decades of travel and reflection. It deepens through Zao Wou-Ki’s bold abstractions and lyrical watercolours, and culminates in Marie de Villepin’s emotionally charged canvases, rich in symbolism and personal intensity. These artists, each with a distinct voice, are united by more than aesthetic affinity: they are part of Villepin’s extended family, bound by long-standing relationships and shared values. This exhibition is not only a celebration of artistic legacy, but also a reflection of the bonds we have built over time, between artists, collectors, and communities.

Across Winds and Time marks an important step in Villepin’s journey to build lasting relationships with collectors across Asia. Beyond showcasing exceptional works, this exhibition invites like-minded collectors to join a shared journey rooted in dialogue, discovery, and a commitment to art as a lived experience. It is an opportunity to gather a community that shares Villepin’s vision in elevating the finest Asian artists to global prominence, while shaping the cultural legacy of artists and collections of the 21st century.

ABOUT MYONGHI KANG

Myonghi Kang’s (b. 1947, Daegu, South Korea) vibrant cosmic paintings project a pure sensibility without boundaries. Through her canvases, the artist expresses a view of the natural world that vacillates between emptiness and fullness in myriad manifestations of colours, marks, and shapes. Myonghi’s paintings radiate joy and powerfully transform their surrounding space. The artist is also a prolific poet; these two mediums allow the artist to capture the world around her, re-constructing its cartography through metaphysical forms of representation.

Developing an interest in art from an early age, Myonghi has long examined her relationship with nature which emerges as a divine silhouette in her paintings. Throughout her life, she has also been a scholar of the philosophical and technical study of traditional Eastern paintings.

From the Gobi Desert to the glaciers of Patagonia, Myonghi has travelled around the world seeking aesthetic inspiration. Travel is a special way for Myonghi to rediscover the essence of painting. Often travelling alone with only a few brushes and some canvas, she returns from her journeys to create large-scale paintings capturing their mesmerising landscapes and memories. She has also travelled extensively around Europe, observing global cultures that continue to inform her work and imbue them with a multinational perspective.

For much of her life, Myonghi has divided her time between South Korea and France. She studied Fine Arts at the College of Fine Arts, Seoul National University. Myonghi immigrated to France in 1972 and first settled in near Aix-en Provence, in a small village named Gardanne. There, she learned the French language but also actively practiced and studied fine art. During her early years in France, Myonghi’s paintings depicted her memories from Korea and reflected the political climate she lived in before leaving the country: “My body was in France, but my mind and soul were still in Korea.”

She soon settled in Paris in a studio near Place Clichy with her husband Setaik. After a few years in the French capital, she started painting the urban street scenes of Paris and the surrounding nature when she moved to Quai de la Loire in the 1980s. Located in the 19th arrondissement, the artist embraced its tranquil canals in the heart of the city. As she observed, she woke up each morning and was captivated by the beauty of Paris that she could see from her studio’s window. Since then, she started working with and embracing the light. She took a brush every morning and painted from the window. According to the hour of the day and the varying light and weather conditions, a painting could continuously evolve, with some being completed over several years.

After Myonghi started exhibiting her ethereal paintings, she befriended renowned artists, poets and writers, including Zao Wou-Ki, Piotr Kowalski, Gilles Aillaud, Alain Jouffroy and Dominique de Villepin. Her works gained widespread recognition in the late 1980s following several international solo exhibitions and poetry recitals, including shows at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (1986), the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul (1989), and Beijing Art Museum of Imperial City in China (2011). In 1981, she and her husband Setaik were the founders of the Musée de Séoul in Seoul, the first artist-founded contemporary art museum in South Korea. The artist also participated in the exhibition and symposium Devant, le futur, as part of the World Expo held in Daejeon, South Korea in 1993.

She currently lives and works in Jeju, South Korea.

ABOUT ZAO WOU-KI

Born in Beijing, Zao Wou-Ki (1920-2013) worked predominantly in oil, watercolor and ink, but also experimented with engraving and lithography. Wou-Ki means ‘no limits’ in Chinese – a prescient forename for an artist who embraced different cultural identities without ever being beholden to one. In 1948, Zao relocated to Paris. The French capital was an inspiration for Zao, who had idolized Matisse and Picasso in his formative years and continued to be influenced by Western modernism and the work of the Impressionists and Expressionists.

Zao is considered to have been one of the most successful painters born in China of his generation, with his paintings widely recognized as an exemplary reconciliation of Chinese and Western aesthetics, in which the language of modern Western abstraction is enriched by a Chinese chord deeply rooted in the past. Zao’s work has been celebrated in numerous museum shows around the world, including most recently the Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris, France; the Asia University Museum of Modern Art, Taichung, Taiwan; Asia Society Museum, New York, USA; and STPI, Singapore, amongst several others.

 ABOUT MARIE DE VILLEPIN

Born in 1986 in Washington, D.C., Marie de Villepin grew up in the United States and in India. Art was a constant feature in her upbringing as she began developing her musical and drawing skills throughout her frequent travels, filling dozens of notebooks, which allowed her to fix moments and emotions as a chronicle of her life. Growing up in a diplomatic household, Marie had the chance to surround herself with a prominent circle of poets, musicians, filmmakers, and painters, including Zao Wou-Ki, a family friend. She was inspired by influential post-war American artists, including Willem de Kooning, Cy Twombly, Joan Mitchell, and Philip Guston. In particular, she admired the musicality, freedom, and capacity for transcendence in their works.   

In 2005, Marie moved to New York, and then to Los Angeles, where she developed various musical projects, before devoting herself entirely to painting. Seeking deeper ties between colours, sounds and rhythm, she took a decisive step to transcribe her inner world onto canvas: painting what she sees and where she lived in a way perhaps to ward off exile, loneliness and doubts through an accumulation of brushstrokes. Gradually, her whole world started taking shape, complete with imaginary landscapes, creatures, and machines of all sorts. Her works trace through space and time, oscillating between figuration and abstraction.   

Marie has participated in a number of group exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, Beijing, and Hong Kong. In 2019 she presented her first solo exhibition titled New Creatures, which marked her return to Paris. In March of 2022 after the pandemic, she presented The Lost Weekend, a combination of works made in the United States and in France, followed by her first major solo exhibition, Murmuration, in Hong Kong. In June that year, Marie was selected as one of the twelve artists to receive Le Prix Antoine Marin. The prize is presented by the gallery Julio Gonzalez in Paris, where each young artist is nominated by a renowned artist: Marie was nominated by Anselm Kiefer.   

In 2023, she presented a solo show, Behind the Sun, at the Today Art Museum in Beijing. In 2024, her works were shown at the Collection Lambert in Avignon as well as at the Zhi Art Museum in Chengdu, China. In 2024 to 2025, she continuously cooperated with galleries around the world, including a group exhibition titled The Dreams of Light at Mariane Ibrahim Gallery in Mexico City, followed by the solo show, Le Jardin Retrouvé, at Espace Muraille in Geneva. 

ABOUT VILLEPIN

Founded by Dominique and Arthur de Villepin, Villepin is a gallery shaped by a passion for art as a force of connection and renewal. With a curatorial vision grounded in storytelling, long-standing friendships with artists, and a deep appreciation for collecting, Villepin stages exhibitions that transcend time and place—illuminating how art helps navigate the complexities of the modern era with dignity, imagination, and hope.

More than a gallery, Villepin is a sanctuary for both artists and collectors. It offers an intimate space where collecting becomes a shared journey—one that builds legacies, fosters dialogue, and redefines how art is experienced. Guided by the mission of creating artists’ legacies through collection management, Villepin provides the first end-to-end solution on the Asian market dedicated to supporting collectors in shaping meaningful, lasting relationships with art. Through this commitment, the gallery empowers collectors to become not only patrons, but stewards of the artists defining our time. With a long-term vision of shaping the next era of great artists and collections, Villepin continues to cultivate trust, champion artistic growth, and contribute to the evolving landscape of cultural legacy.  

Lee Eugene Gallery

17 Apgujeong-ro 77-gil, Cheongdam-dong, Gangnam District, Seoul, South Korea

Tuesday – Saturday | 11 am – 6 pm
Sunday  – Monday | Closed

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