> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.catapult-platform.art/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # The Image Falls Apart the Closer You Get - URL: https://www.catapult-platform.art/jaebum-joo-pixel-sculpture-artist-focus/ - Published: 2026-09-02T02:37:10.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-02T02:37:09.000Z - Description: Discover our Artist in Focus feature on Jaebum Joo, whose pixel paintings and sculptures turn personal memory into a public, shared image. - Author: Dominique Catherina Foertig - Tags: Artist in Focus, Memory & Identity, Digital & Screen, Painting, Sculpture & Installation, Seoul **Jaebum Joo** **Born:** Seoul, South Korea **Based in:** Seoul, South Korea **Medium:** Painting, Sculpture, Animation **Education:** Studied animation at university **Recent Exhibitions:** *SOSOSOLO EXHIBITION*, Hakgojae Gallery, Seoul, 2026 *Beyond The Screen*, Gallery CDA, Seoul, 2025 *Pixelized Adventure in Japan*, Sony Park Mini, Tokyo, 2023 **Website:** [joojaebum.com](https://joojaebum.com/?ref=catapult-platform.art) **Instagram:** [@joojaebum](https://instagram.com/joojaebum?ref=catapult-platform.art) **Image Courtesy:** Courtesy of the Artist (artwork images). Portrait: Photo by SeungHoon Jeong / @Hypebeastkr. ![Jaebum Joo - Catapult Contemporary](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/08/Jaebum-Joo-artist.jpg) Artist in Focus feature on ****Jaebum Joo - Catapult Contemporary** . Image Courtesy of the Artist ## Jaebum Joo - Seoul, Pixel Painting and Sculpture A pixel means nothing by itself. [**Jaebum Joo**](https://joojaebum.com/?ref=catapult-platform.art) works from that smallest unit of a digital image, the single square of color that only resolves once many others sit beside it, and rebuilds it at the scale of a wall or a standing figure. Personal experiences and memories are translated into pixels, then carried from the digital screen into painting and sculpture. ![Artist Profile Feature: Jaebum Joo, studio practice and artwork at Hakgojae Gallery, Seoul, 2026. Wide gallery view, framed panels and a standing wood-block figure sculpture.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/08/jaebum-joo-pixel-sculpture-hakgojae-gallery-seoul-2026-installation-01.webp) ****Jaebum Joo,** installation view, Hakgojae Gallery, Seoul, 2026\. Courtesy of the Artist. ![Artist Profile Feature: Jaebum Joo, studio practice and artwork at Hakgojae Gallery, Seoul, 2026. Room view with two figure sculptures and a framed garden painting.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/08/jaebum-joo-pixel-sculpture-hakgojae-gallery-seoul-2026-installation-02.webp) ****Jaebum Joo,** installation view, Hakgojae Gallery, Seoul, 2026\. Courtesy of the Artist. ![Jaebum Joo, studio practice and artwork at Hakgojae Gallery, Seoul, 2026. Green garden scene with a blue pond, framed in raw wood.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/08/jaebum-joo-pixel-sculpture-hakgojae-gallery-seoul-2026-work-summer-edge.webp) ****Jaebum Joo,** Summer Edge, Acrylic Spray Paint on Wood, 162 × 176 × 7 cm, 2026\. Hakgojae Gallery, Seoul, 2026\. Courtesy of the Artist. The zoom carries the whole argument. Joo studied animation at university and worked in related companies before moving into pixel art, and the habit of thinking in frames and grids seems to have stayed with him as the pixel moved from the screen into painting and sculpture. What changes is the distance at which the image agrees to hold together. > "On a screen, pixels come together to form a clear image when viewed from a distance, but as the viewer moves closer, the image dissolves into individual units, leaving room for interpretation." > Jaebum Joo In *Almost Someone*, that logic becomes a body. The figure holds onto its larger image from a distance, while closer viewing brings its separate pixel-like units to the foreground. The title carries the argument as much as the form does. The figure becomes less fixed as its individual units take over, somewhere between a person and the information from which that person is being assembled. ![Artist Profile Feature: Jaebum Joo, studio practice and artwork at Hakgojae Gallery, Seoul, 2026. Wall with three small framed landscapes and blue wave-form wall reliefs.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/08/jaebum-joo-pixel-sculpture-hakgojae-gallery-seoul-2026-installation-03.webp) ****Jaebum Joo**, installation view, Hakgojae Gallery, Seoul, 2026\. Courtesy of the Artist. ![Artist Profile Feature: Jaebum Joo, studio practice and artwork at Hakgojae Gallery, Seoul, 2026. Two blue wood wall reliefs suggesting layered coastline and sky.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/08/jaebum-joo-pixel-sculpture-hakgojae-gallery-seoul-2026-installation-04.webp) ****Jaebum Joo,** installation view, Hakgojae Gallery, Seoul, 2026\. Courtesy of the Artist. *Resolution 50* takes the same logic into a pixelated scene. From a distance, its individual units build a larger image. Closer attention returns them to separate fields of color. Across works such as *Golden Flicker* and *Holding the Blue*, the same question continues. Recognition depends on what the image gives you and what it leaves unresolved. Reducing an image is not a loss of information so much as an invitation for someone else's memory to fill the gap. ![new pixel artist catapult contemporary](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/08/jaebum-joo-pixel-sculpture-hakgojae-gallery-seoul-2026-work-almost-someone.webp) ****Almost Someone\_01**, Oil on Solid Wood, 12 × 72.5 × 155 cm, 2026 Courtesy of the Artist Material matters here. In works made on cut or assembled wood, the pixel gains a surface and texture that the screen does not have. That friction, between a digital logic and a material that resists it and refuses to be uniform, seems to be where the work actually lives, more than in any single image it reconstructs. Joo studied animation and worked at related companies before moving into pixel art, developing a practice he describes as that of a pixelist. ![Jaebum Joo, studio practice and artwork at Hakgojae Gallery, Seoul, 2026. Framed garden and pond scene rendered in painted wood pixel blocks.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/08/jaebum-joo-pixel-sculpture-hakgojae-gallery-seoul-2026-work-resolution-50.webp) ****Jaebum Joo,** Resolution 50, Acrylic Spray Paint on Acrylic Panel with Wood Frame, 55 × 55 × 3 cm, 2026\. Hakgojae Gallery, Seoul, 2026\. Courtesy of the Artist. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/08/jaebum-joo-pixel-sculpture-hakgojae-gallery-seoul-2026-work-golden-flicker.webp) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/08/jaebum-joo-pixel-sculpture-hakgojae-gallery-seoul-2026-work-holding-the-blue.webp) Jaebum Joo, Golden Flicker (left), Acrylic Spray Paint on Wood, 95 × 57 × 3 cm, 2026; Holding the Blue (right), Acrylic Spray on Wood, Lenticular on Reverse, 83 × 64 × 6 cm, 2026\. Hakgojae Gallery, Seoul, 2026\. Courtesy of the Artist. ![catapult contemporary platform art Artist Profile Feature: Jaebum Joo, studio practice and artwork at Hakgojae Gallery, Seoul, 2026. Wide wall relief of layered blue wood strips over a coastal scene.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/08/jaebum-joo-pixel-sculpture-hakgojae-gallery-seoul-2026-work-extended-horizon.webp) ****Jaebum Joo,** Extended Horizon, Acrylic Spray Paint on Wood, 50 × 160 × 5 cm, 2026\. Hakgojae Gallery, Seoul, 2026\. Courtesy of the Artist. ![aebum Joo, studio practice and artwork at Hakgojae Gallery, Seoul, 2026. Close-up of green and black wood blocks around a raised wood knob.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/08/jaebum-joo-pixel-sculpture-hakgojae-gallery-seoul-2026-detail-01.webp) ****Jaebum Joo**, detail view, Hakgojae Gallery, Seoul, 2026\. Courtesy of the Artist. *Beyond The Screen* at **Gallery CDA in Seoul** and group presentations that carried the work through Tokyo, Barcelona and Saint Petersburg. His current exhibition at [**Hakgojae Gallery in Seoul**](https://www.instagram.com/hakgojaegallery/?ref=catapult-platform.art) reflects the latest body of this practice, where pixels move across painting, sculpture and installation as part of the same developing practice. The work leaves open what resolution a memory needs before it stops being anyone's in particular. --- ### **stay connected, keep the art in motion** [**Jaebum Joo on Instagram**](https://www.instagram.com/joojaebum/?ref=catapult-platform.art) [**Hakgojae Gallery in Seoul** **Instagram**](https://www.instagram.com/hakgojaegallery/?ref=catapult-platform.art) --- [Artist in Focus](https://www.catapult-platform.art/artist-in-focus/) ## Erekle Chinchilakashvili: Stitching Memory From What the Archive Discards [Read More](https://www.catapult-platform.art/erekle-chinchilakashvili-artist-in-focus-budapest) [Exhibition](https://www.catapult-platform.art/exhibition/) ## Raleigh Chapel presents Nicola Genovese: The Dead Do Not Log Off Anymore [Read More](https://www.catapult-platform.art/raleigh-chapel-presented-nicola-genovese-infinite-stage) [Interview](https://www.catapult-platform.art/interview/) ## Paul Riedmüller: Painting the Digital Hallucination [Read More](https://www.catapult-platform.art/paul-riedmueller-painting-the-digital-hallucination)