BETWEEN WOLF AND DOG — Entre Loup et Chien : Hong IlHwa

Hong IlHwa has long called himself a painter of the forest. For years, he sought to grasp it — naming species, tracing symbioses, deciphering its orders. Yet the forest always eluded him, inhabiting a dimension vaster, slower, and more sovereign than any word he gave it.

Between Wolf and Dog takes its title from a French expression for twilight — l'heure entre loup et chien — that liminal moment when light falters and one can no longer tell whether the silhouette approaching is a tame creature or a wild threat. In this in-between, certainty dissolves. For centuries, IlHwa reflects, humans have compartmentalised nature: sanctuary versus threat, native versus intruder, order versus chaos. Yet measured against forest time, these divisions are nothing but fragile lines drawn by human hands.

In this new cycle, IlHwa reintroduces the human figure and the animal into the forest's heart. The faces that haunt his canvases are not narrative subjects — they are points of rupture, standing between memory and present, between taming and fury, unable to separate themselves from what surrounds them. Hyperrealist portraits emerge from dense, fantastical vegetation; wolves, leopards, and birds of paradise merge with embroidered garments and ancient symbols, dissolving the boundary between the wild and the civilised.

Between Wolf and Dog is not a celebration of nature, but a crisis of perception — an invitation to set aside our names, and dissolve into the otherness of what we face.

— Artskoco Gallery, Luxembourg · 3–30 June 2026