Sejin Hong is an artist who paints the sensory experience of traversing between the material and immaterial, the real and the virtual. Drawing from her own experiences, she edits and reprocesses the subjectivity of auditory perception into visual outcomes. Through this process, she translates information accumulated through perception into phenomena that cannot otherwise be experienced, manifesting them on canvas and within space. She fills the blank spaces of auditory perception with images of simple shapes, lines, concrete spaces, and planes.

Her early works are set in familiar spatial contexts such as playgrounds, stadiums, and factories. These paintings present hybrid realities that juxtapose artificial spaces and objects with natural elements, emphasizing a sense of three-dimensionality and perspective. Consequently, the representational images within her paintings carry symbols that feel familiar to the viewer. Natural forms resembling living cells or fractals mingle with mechanical and artificial objects, producing an uncanny sense of strangeness. Hong’s interest also extends beyond painting to include drawing and installation, reflecting a certain “mechanical curiosity.”

This bodily sensitivity, augmented through mechanical or instrumental devices, presents an intriguing posthuman theme. The artist examines the transformation of natural sound as it is mediated through assistive technologies such as cochlear implants and hearing aids, seeking to express an understanding of these altered forms and properties. In this context, installation becomes an effective medium for articulating her anatomical curiosity toward the sensory mechanisms and internal workings of machines.

One example, Apple Pine(2021), metaphorically represents such devices through circular forms and monitors of various materials and textures. These colorful, differently sized spheres visualize the immateriality of sound in physical form, capturing ephemeral sensations and information as fixed entities. The monitors display video imagery of pineapples in different shapes—similar yet distinct—suggesting the relative diversity of sensory experiences shaped by the mechanical characteristics of auditory devices. This can also be interpreted as the artist’s extended inquiry into perception, tracing its origins and processes.

Over the past few years, Hong’s solo exhibitions have revealed a distinct evolution in her practice and conceptual concerns. Her first solo exhibition, 《Clear Noise》, captured expansive spaces where sound resonates. The paintings from this period evoke the transference of sensations as one experiences familiar vibrations and reverberations. The accompanying installation Tip of the Needle(2019) imagined the internal structure of a 3D printer used to produce hearing prosthetics, marking an early articulation of the artist’s core interests. Her next exhibition, 《Replacing the Battery of a Vase》, presented compositions combining natural forms and artificial objects in reconstructed visual arrangements.

From this point onward, her paintings and installations began to actively explore the simplicity, internal structure, and perceptual ambiguity of geometry and machinery. This direction became clearer in her 2021 solo exhibition 《Hidden Languages》, featuring her “Geometric Landscape Series,” where distinctive features of objects were deliberately omitted and reduced to minimal geometric forms. Here, Hong not only focused on composition but also on the materiality of paint itself—the textures of dripping, covering, and scraping acted as sensory bridges in the process of visualizing sound. Her pursuit of simplicity became even more pronounced in her recent exhibition 《Almost Within Reach》, which the artist describes as “a process of projecting sensation onto the subject to discover a pictorial language.”

In her recent works, Hong emphasizes flatness more than ever before. This tendency reflects her desire to more candidly reveal the uncertainty of her own sensory experiences, which previously served as the basis for her spatial compositions. Using hearing aids and cochlear implants, she continues to explore the gap between the sensory information she receives and the actual auditory input—painting as a way to bridge this divide.

As hearing-assistive technologies evolve, this once-clear distance has become blurred, leading her to further question the nature of what she depicts. The space between the two types of information is not a void but a fold—filled with vanished or omitted “languages”—which she captures through simplified forms and linear imagery. Each functions as a kind of monad, containing fragments of memory and information, unfolding the folds of perception into a spectrum.

The simple geometric shapes in her work refer to misunderstandings and mistranslations that can arise in communication. This recalls her contemplation of the technical characteristics that cause her to mishear words differently from what was spoken. While the inner mechanisms of modern industrial products grow increasingly complex, their external designs tend to become simpler—a paradox that Hong continually explores, using simplification to emphasize the accelerating pace of technological development. These experiments are tied to existential inquiries into perceptual misinterpretation and the fundamental nature of communication itself.

Another notable shift in her recent practice lies in how she collects and manipulates reference images, as well as in her scraping technique. Previously, she gathered online images and arranged them randomly in virtual three-dimensional space to explore form and composition. Recently, however, she reconstructs her canvases using photographs she takes herself, collaging them and adjusting the tension and relaxation of focus to recompose the scene.

This shift reflects her move away from emphasizing spatial depth toward greater flatness. She seeks freedom from the pre-planned visual references that restrict painterly spontaneity and material exploration, embracing instead the accidental results that emerge through the act of painting. The scraping marks visible in her recent works can be read as a way to visualize the fine diversity of individual sounds.

What should not be misunderstood is that Hong is not interested in achieving sensory precision or compensation. Rather, she seeks to expose the immediacy, uncertainty, and potential errors inherent in sensory experience itself. Her use of geometric simplification, spatial breadth, and the juxtaposition of artificial and natural forms reveals the essence of being through imperfect landscapes.

Crucially, her visualization of auditory gaps is not an attempt to replace or compensate for one sense with another. Instead, it represents her curiosity and engagement with the world. Thus, Sejin Hong’s paintings drift between reality and phenomena, revealing what cannot be seen. The distinct developments in her recent work vividly reflect her ongoing artistic inquiry into perception and existence, as she continues to build new worlds through her practice.

References

• [비평] 2022 퍼블릭아트 뉴히어로 - 찰나의 순간들을 붙잡는
  [Critique] 2022 PUBLIC ART NEW HERO - Capturing Fleeting Moments