This exhibition marks the first major retrospective in Korea dedicated to Wayne Thiebaud, one of the most celebrated artists of the twentieth century. Best known for his paintings of everyday subjects such as cakes, candy counters, ice cream, and shoes, Thiebaud transformed ordinary objects into extraordinary works of art through his distinctive painterly language. Featuring 104 paintings and drawings, the exhibition offers Korean audiences their first comprehensive introduction to the breadth and depth of his remarkable career.

Hyundai Card Culture Project 31: Wayne Thiebaud – The Order of Things presents a new perspective on the artist's oeuvre. While Thiebaud is often associated with Pop Art because of his depictions of consumer culture and urban landscapes during the 1960s, he was fundamentally a painter devoted to the traditions of light, color, and the materiality of paint. His unique visual language bridges classical painting techniques with contemporary subject matter, placing him beyond conventional art historical categories.

The exhibition reinterprets Thiebaud's work through the concept of "order" proposed in Michel Foucault's philosophical work The Order of Things. For Foucault, order refers to the invisible systems that shape the way people perceive and understand the world. Likewise, Thiebaud can be understood as an artist deeply engaged with the visual structures through which we organize and experience reality.

In works such as Dessert Circle and Shoe Rows, objects are not simply arranged on a surface; they are meticulously organized according to carefully constructed compositional systems. This underlying sense of order extends throughout Thiebaud's career, from his early still lifes to his later portraits and cityscapes. Human figures, buildings, and urban environments all become elements within an ordered visual framework, through which the artist explores themes of solitude, memory, and emotional distance.

The exhibition also highlights Thiebaud's masterful use of impasto, the technique of applying paint in thick, textured layers. His richly sculpted brushwork gives cakes the appearance of freshly whipped frosting and imbues everyday objects with a remarkable physical presence. More than a stylistic signature, impasto became a means for Thiebaud to heighten the reality and vitality of the objects he painted.

As the first exhibition to examine Wayne Thiebaud's seventy-five-year artistic career through the themes of visual order, symmetry, and disruption, Hyundai Card Culture Project 31: Wayne Thiebaud – The Order of Things offers a groundbreaking interpretation of his work. Through Korea's first retrospective of the artist, visitors are invited to reflect on the hidden systems that shape contemporary life and to reconsider the meaning of order in the world around them.