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Motions to Unfurl in the gallery The Tiger Room
Last Saturday, the group exhibition “Motions to Unfurl” opened at The Tiger Room on Heßstraße, featuring works by Ye Cheng, Eunju Hong and Jiwon Song, curated by Heike Dempster. Numerous guests found their way to the exhibition space to learn about the diverse artistic positions that deal with identity, the body, materiality, and the question of visibility.
A particular highlight of the opening was the moving performance by Eunju Hong and performer < 0 >Alina Belyagina, who impressively staged the theme of unfolding—physically, emotionally, and spatially. The precise choreography and subtle gestures of the two performers immersed the audience in a collective moment of silence and resonance.
The evening also provided an opportunity for intensive exchange between visitors, artists, and the curator, marking the beginning of a dialogue that will continue in the exhibition over the coming weeks.
Ye Cheng works with painting, installations, and everyday materials such as sugar paper to make fragility, memory, and transformation sensually tangible.
She is a Chinese-American artist (born 1992) currently living in New York. The experience of living between borders and communities as a first-generation immigrant in the US has strongly shaped her view of home and identity. Through her art, Ye Cheng relates her personal challenges to the larger context of modernity and recalls the loss of Chinese heritage as an expression of uprooting, mobility, alienation, and self-discovery. In 2023, Ye Cheng was featured in Artnet as one of the “5 Artists on the Verge of Breaking Through.”
Rechts: Ye Cheng, Happy excursion no.12 ,Acrylic on synthetic silk, 107 x 76,2cm, 2025
Top left Jiwon Song, reverie service, Objet Trouvé, Epoxidharz, Plexiglas, Holz, Stoff, Buntstifte , 130 x 90 x 124 cm (Breite x Tiefe x Höhe), 2025
Top right: Ye Cheng, Happy excursion no.6, Acryl auf Seide, 107 x 117cm, 2025
TRop left: Ye Cheng, Happy excursion no.12 , Acrylic on synthetic silk, 107 x 76,2cm, 2025
Eunju Hong (born in Seoul, South Korea, in 1993) lives and works in Germany and South Korea. She studied at the Korea National University of Arts in Seoul, the Beaux-Arts de Paris, and the HfG Karlsruhe. In 2023, she completed her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich in Julian Rosefeldt’s class as a master student.
Her first solo exhibition took place in Seoul in 2022. She has participated in numerous group exhibitions and artist residencies in Europe and Asia, including at the Goethe-Institut Paris, the Museum of Contemporary Art Busan, the Künstlerhaus Bethanien Berlin, the Kunstarkaden Munich, and the Taipei Artist Village. In 2024, she had two solo exhibitions, one in Munich and one in Seoul.
In her paintings, Jiwon Song explores the porosity between mythology, the body, and nature, with her visual worlds often populated by delicate, hybrid beings that exist in liminal spaces.
Jiwon Song was born in Busan, South Korea, in 1993 and now lives in Munich. Her works explore the boundary between the visible and the imaginary, resurrecting “ghosts” and forgotten souls through drawings and wax sculptures. By transforming discarded objects into hybrid “ghost furniture,” she brings ephemeral beings back into the world, combining humor, melancholy, and curiosity. Jiwon Song studied painting at Ewha Womans University (BFA, 2017) and is currently studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including in Munich, Frankfurt, Brussels, Seoul, and Zurich.
Links, mittig: Eunju Hong, The players, 3D print with PLA, filament, wig, clothes, 90 × 180 × 100 cm (size variable), 2025
Eunju Hong, Exhibition Video: Practice to Fall, Single Channel, 4K Video, Black and White, Stereo, 18’ 14’’, 1//5 +1 A.P, 2025
Motions to Unfurl (Bewegungen des Entfaltens)
The exhibition draws on conceptual approaches that explore hybrid forms of life and perception arising from the interplay of technology, mythology, materiality, and human existence. Through painterly, installation, and sculptural interventions by Ye Cheng, Eunju Hong, and Jiwon Song, the exhibition examines how materiality, loss, and belonging are imprinted on physicality and landscape—and reveals how identity is shaped at the margins of visibility and power. Heike Dempster
The exhibition is open until January 24. It can be visited this coming Saturday as part of Tour 5.
Ye Cheng, Happy excursion no.6, Acryl auf Seide, 2025