Price
₩9,000,000
A unique original — the only one in the world
Art protects art
8 out of 10
artists are shut out by banks
Until the next exhibition, the next performance. For artists, income gaps are an unavoidable reality. For fellow artists forced into predatory loans just to afford paint, canvas, and studio rent, proceeds from this artwork become the Seed Fund — extending a fair hand at fair rates.
Voices of fellow artists
“The memory of going hungry for three days, alone, so my children wouldn't know.”
— 50s, theater artist
166 artworks sold, each becoming a seed of solidarity
One artwork becomes the oxygen that keeps a fellow artist creating.
Sales proceeds go to the artist mutual-aid fund.
Butterfly's Dream
Song Gwangyeon
- Category
- Korean Painting
- Material
- Acrylic on canvas
- Size
- 72.7×72.7cm · Size 20 · Medium How big is this? →
- Year
- 2025
- Price
- ₩9,000,000
- Availability
- For sale
About the Artist
Song Gwangyeon is a painter known for the 〈Dream of a Butterfly〉 series, which combines Korean iconography with the visual language of Pop Art. After completing her M.A. in Western Painting at Yeungnam University, she has held 24 solo exhibitions at venues including Gallery Sun (Seoul), BNK Kyongnam Bank HQ Art Gallery (Changwon), and Ulju Culture & Arts Center. She was selected as a Solo Booth artist at the 2017 START Art Fair at Saatchi Gallery in London. Her international exhibitions include the 2016 invitational at the Korean Cultural Center in Washington D.C. and the 2017 invitational at the Korean Cultural Center in Shanghai. Her works are held in the collections of the Ulsan Museum of Art and the Korean Folk Village Museum.
Artist Statement
Butterfly's Dream
An act of yearning toward the dream and happiness essential to humankind
The overarching title of the works is The Butterfly's Dream.
The Butterfly's Dream series began from the wish that, for modern people drained by excessive desire and steeped in materialism, we might return to humanity's original posture and pursue a worthy happiness in life filled with steady effort, like the order of nature. This is my own dream, and a yearning that it might also become the shared dream of those living today.
In The Butterfly's Dream a butterfly always appears, filling in embroidery upon a hollowed pattern of a peony painting (Morando). The peony-painting motif — the work's special code and identity — is not borrowed from Korean folk painting (Minhwa) only as image, but for the inner nourishment it carries: in traditional meaning peony painting signifies wealth and prosperity and bears the quality of supplication for blessing (gibok-seong, 祈福性). I have extended this into a personal meaning, using it as a form that reflects the work's worldview. By embodying in the work the act of a butterfly stitch by stitch filling in the embroidery (jasu) of life for a dream to be completed tomorrow, I was able to maximize visually the essential meaning of the singular, pure yearning humans hold.
What the work most concentrates on is projecting onto the particular sentiment of the East — and especially of Korea — the ideal motto and values that the artist's worldview seeks to convey. As a painter holding a brush, I chose the most familiar, basic, and primal medium of paint (acrylic), and depicted, sculpturally and realistically as if an objet, an entirely different material — embroidered peony fabric. The moments of replicating, thread by thread as if embroidering, were sublimated into "a yearning for happiness and an act of supplication."
All the works take the contemporary situation as their setting, and some appropriate works by pop art icons such as Andy Warhol and Lichtenstein, drawing on the meaning and historical context of those works and the issues they raised — the loss of humanity, a society grown sick. In particular, using mass-produced prints by these masters as a background code — set against the meaning of embroidery filled in with the diligence, effort, and earnestness that the Butterfly's Dream series highlights — also carries an explicit intent of satire.
Key Career Highlights
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Recently Sold
166 artworks sold recently
More about Song Gwangyeon
Magazine
Song Kwang-yeon: The Butterfly Pulls a Thread
In Song Kwang-yeon's Butterfly's Dream, the butterfly trails a thread. The flowers are painted like embroidery. A close reading of four works at the Seed Art Festival.
Sep 18, 2026 · Seed Art Festival
Korean Traditional Painting Meets the Modern: Ink, Pigment, and the Present
Korean traditional painting is far more than old-fashioned art. Materials like hanji, ink, powdered pigments, and mineral colors come alive in the hands of contemporary artists in entirely new ways. Through 25 Korean paintings in SAF 2026, this piece explores how traditional media meets a modern sensibility.
Apr 8, 2026 · Seed Art Festival
Contemporary Art Pricing — Artist, Medium, Size, Date: 4 Factors of Korean Art Market
“Is this price fair?” The question every buyer asks. To answer it you need to understand the four forces that set art prices: artist, medium, size, and date.
May 2, 2026 · Seed Art FestivalRelated materials
Korean media · Original Korean article
This article text is currently available in Korean. Open the source to read the original version.
Korean media · Original Korean article
This article text is currently available in Korean. Open the source to read the original version.
Korean media · Original Korean article
This article text is currently available in Korean. Open the source to read the original version.
Korean media · Original Korean article
This article text is currently available in Korean. Open the source to read the original version.
Korean media · Original Korean article
This article text is currently available in Korean. Open the source to read the original version.
Two beginnings made by one piece
- For you —
- One-of-a-kind in the world
- For the artist —
- the pride of standing with a peer
- For a fellow artist —
- a new ₩3,000,000 path of low-interest support
354 artists have walked this path of recovery; 95% returned to open it for the next.