OVERTHINKING

South Korean visual artist Naeun Kang returns to Bergen after three years with a solo exhibition at Northing.

The exhibition presents a new body of oil paintings, graphite drawings, and watercolours. The works continue the artist's longstanding exploration of what is awkward, broken, messy, vulnerable, absurd, or hidden, and the ambivalence these states hold.  The works move between reflections on psychology and interpersonal relationships, and the artist's transient or recurring fixations and daydreams.

////////////// Short story, in the spirit of overthinking,

i. THE MOLE

i, and the mole on my face were visiting South Korea,  talking to my mother and aunt. My aunt asked me if i liked my mole. i told her i had not thought about it much.

My aunt told me about her daughter L who also used to have a mole. L was a cousin my age. L had just gone through a divorce. A short marriage. After it ended, L was trying things. Not in crisis, just with a particular openness that follows big life events. During this time someone versed in physiognomy, interpretation of facial features as signs, suggested L remove her mole because "it wasn't doing anything for her face." Despite not having thought about her mole that much previously, L had replied: "but maybe it's a charming mole?" But the face-reader and others present in that conversation with no particular knowledge on physiognomy were in agreement that hers was not.

L didn't believe in face-reading, but also wasn't particularly attached to her mole. She went and got it removed. Afterward she was satisfied, much more than she had anticipated, because she had not anticipated anything at all. It turned out she really preferred her face without the mole. She just hadn't gotten around to knowing it yet. i pictured L's mole-less face with a satisfied smile, flawless and round like the moon.

ii. REFLEX

My mother informed me mole laser removal cost only fifteen euros in Korea, and they take walk-ins for such micro-procedures. My mother and aunt suggested i get the mole removed during my visit.

They were also insinuating that i, like my cousin L, was someone who didn't know what i wanted until i had it. i agreed, that i honestly had never been sure of what i wanted.  And i had always been drawn to low-effort change. It wasn't something that i needed, but if it was this accessible, it could turn into something that i might as well want.

i still asked them, more as a reflex against others' push for my change than conviction. "But what if the mole on my face is actually doing something good, in some way i can't name.  Some charm, or something." My aunt and my mother, without physiognomical framework, shook their heads at different speeds in disagreement.

iii. THE CYCLE

Having lived with the mole my entire life, most days my brain didn't even register it when looking into the mirror.  If i were pressed to name what i didn't like about my mole, two things: the protrusion, and the hair growing on the middle of it.

During conversations, i sometimes felt people's eyes drift to the hair on the mole. The mole was next to my nose, i could imagine that when i spoke, the hair on it rustled.  i had never confirmed this with anyone, because to ask this would be to announce that i had not been listening, but had been, instead, thinking about myself being perceived.

The urge to pluck the hair on the mole arrived, mostly as a procrastinatory thing, when i was avoiding other real  things. But in my room, tweezers were reliably misplaced, so the hair got removed maybe 5 times a year. An uninteresting loop that would occur about 50 times in the next decade alone. 15 euros to cancel a subscription to this needless cognitive loop forever, and get a small clearing in my head. i didn't know what i would put there. Still.

i announced to my mother and aunt that i would get it done the next morning. They celebrated it, since being quick or making a decision is uncharacteristic of me.

iv. THE ROOM

Synthetic leather bed at the dermatologist. A nurse put numbing cream on the mole and told me to wait 10 minutes until the laser. i lay under the ceiling lights with brightness too aggressive for a room designed around horizontal bodies. i spent the wait wondering if my new mole-less face warranted a new passport, and worried if i would be able to arrange that before my flight in the next ten days.

v. THE CRATER

The lasering of the mole took only a fraction of a second, done before i could hold my breath and brace for it.

"Yours actually goes really deep. Here, you can still see the root," the dermatologist said, somewhat excited, handing me a mirror. The lasered spot was now a small crater. The top of the mole had been burned off, but remaining bits of the mole were still visible and dark at the bottom, like parts of an artifact that had survived an excavation.

The dermatologist told me that the mole would grow back slightly lighter, until the root was fully removed.

i asked if he could just "go deeper and take it out entirely today?"

"No. That would damage the surrounding tissue. You'd need to come back for two or three more sessions, after the skin heals. Maybe even more sessions. We just can't know how deep your root goes, since we can only see it from the surface."

vi. THE COPY

i had to wear a hydrocolloid patch over the spot until the skin healed for ten days. Each of the three friends i saw separately during this time asked if i was now mole-less.

i replied, whining, "No, the mole grows back as long as the root is there. And apparently now i always need to put sunscreen on it, otherwise the new mole could grow darker." The friends all told me that i should always be using sunscreen anyway.

My father also revealed to me that even he uses sunscreen every day. He suggested a new perspective. Think about how sunscreen has an expiration date. That makes him use it every day to not let it go to waste.

When the patch came off, the crater had grown a new mole. Slightly fainter than before, maybe slightly smaller. It also grew a new hair in the middle.

i couldn't believe that my body knew to grow another mole. i wondered if it was similar to when you shave a spotted-pattern puppy, its coat grows back in the same pattern.

vii. RUDENESS

My Oslo friend C was entertained by the tale. and said:  "Anyway, good that the mole grew back, because honestly your face would be so boring without it."

by Naeun Kang
June 11, 2026