Until recently, the Seoul-based artist Roh Choong-hyun was focused on painting bleak yet poetic urban landscapes—riverside parks and zoos. But with the election of the right-wing conservative government in South Korea in 2008, Roh felt the need to respond to the uncomfortable political conditions; they triggered a “physical response,” as he puts it. In the thirteen works in his exhibition “Closed-Door Room,” Roh exploits confined spaces associated with repression and violence, most of which come from sites linked to recent Korean history.

A typical new piece by Roh, Room (all works cited, 2009),