“Sonder” (2025)
For Los Angeles-based artist Seonna Hong, painting isn’t simply an exercise in visual representation. It’s also an opportunity to mine emotional terrains, transforming internal experiences into universal statements through otherworldly landscapes and figures. These practices are at the heart of her latest solo exhibition, titled Cognitive Dissonance.
The show gathers several of Hong’s paintings from this past year, each radiating with moody, Gauguin-like color palettes. Many canvases plunge women into strange, abstracted environments, bursting with twisting branches, darkened grass, and coarse streaks of paint, juxtaposing Hong’s softer, more fluid brushstrokes. Despite their circumstances, the artist’s subjects nevertheless seem at ease, embracing one another, lounging beneath a tree, observing the sky, and traversing rugged mountains. It’s as though these women have entered their own subconsciousness and, rather than being disarmed by that fact, they have accepted the introspection these moments can afford. Each tree is a synapse meant to be traced; each figure is a presence meant to be spoken to; and each setting is a memory meant to be explored.
That process can, of course, be uncomfortable, as the exhibition’s title implies. Cognitive Dissonance arrives during an intense period of upheaval, whether it be politically, culturally, or environmentally. This tension is obvious throughout Hong’s paintings, particularly in her treatment of landscape. Her subjects may be calm, but their surroundings buzz with texture, color, and contrasts. The inner self, Hong seems to suggest, may be a site of reflection, but it’s also marred by turbulence, having absorbed the catastrophes of the outside world. Even so, introspection is essential—and it isn’t necessarily a project we must embark upon alone. After all, Hong doesn’t depict anyone as a solitary figure in her work. All her subjects exist together, investigating themselves in tandem with others.
Given her thematic scope, Hong’s work is incredibly intimate and autobiographical. But that isn’t to say it alienates its viewer. The women in her paintings bear no expression, offering us a blank canvas upon which to project our own fears, desires, hopes, and ideas. Cognitive Dissonance also features canvases without any figures whatsoever, showcasing only dramatic gestures, geometric shapes, and bold colors.
“My paintings serve as a visual journey for me,” Hong says of the exhibition. “The emotion lives in the land itself, striations in the sky, or in the jagged rocks—the figures are simply anchors, witnesses, sometimes stand-ins for myself, sometimes for no one at all. This new work is a record of trying to stay human and engaged and honest when everything feels like it’s both too much and not enough.”
Seonna Hong: Cognitive Dissonance is currently on view in New York at Hashimoto Contemporary through January 10, 2026.
Seonna Hong’s latest solo exhibition explores the inner self through otherworldly, emotionally charged landscapes.
“The Collision of Truths” (2025)
“Saudade” (2025)
“Study for Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows” (2025)
“Eudaimonia” (2025)
Seonna Hong: Cognitive Dissonance is now on view in New York at Hashimoto Contemporary through January 10, 2026.
“The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows” (2025)
“Laotong” (2025)
“Cognitive Dissonance” (2025)
Exhibition Information:
Seonna Hong
Cognitive Dissonance
December 13, 2025–January 10, 2026
Hashimoto Contemporary
54 Ludlow Street, New York, NY 10002
Seonna Hong: Website | Instagram
Hashimoto Contemporary: Website | Instagram
My Modern Met granted permission to feature photos by Hashimoto Contemporary.
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